I 









^^/> 



s^ -m^- 



a^ 







V#/. 



OR 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Z^y'n^ W/ 

illllli r'^k^' 



DODD4E4'=337'=3 





Class __llj- 

Book 

Copight)J" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE CITY 



THAT 



Lieth Four-Square 

f 
OR 

THINGS ABOVE 



By ALFRED KUMMER 



m 



Mayhew Publishing Company, 
100 Ruggles Street, Boston, Mass. 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
TwoGooies Recetved 

MAY 22 1906 

/T^Copyrighi Entry 
CLASS/^ )Jc No. 
COPY B. 



Copyrighted, 1906. 
ALFRED KUMMER. 

All rights reserved. 



\. 



DEDICATION. 

To my Brothers in the ministry, whose chief function it 
is, by personal example, and by the preaching of the Word, 
to Hft the thoughts and Hves of men to ''the things which 
are above"; and to all followers of "the King immortal 
invisible"; but especially to those who, if they look up at all, 
must look through clouds and tears, this book is prayerfully 
and affectionately 

DEDICATED. 




Rev. i\LFRED KUMMER. 



FOREWORD. 

The century upon which we have just entered promises 
to be quite as materiaHstic as the one just gone, and still 
more given to scientific and material developments than any 
of its predecessors. The age is eminently practical and 
utiUtarian. It is everywhere affirmed that no one knows 
anything about Heaven, or "the things which are above"; 
that John's vision is only a dream full of inexplicable 
mysteries; that to write about these things, is simply to 
speculate, and to produce nothing either worthy or helpful; 
that it is the nature of presumption to lift the veil and to 
peer into that which is mysterious and apocalyptic; that 
people should be instructed in the affairs of this world, and 
that Heaven, and dying, and "the things above," will take 
care of themselves as a natural sequence of right living. 

But, on the contrary, there are millions of people who, 
while in this world, are not of it; they claim citizenship in 
the world of which I have written; they are daily "searching 
the Scriptures to see whether these things be so"; they daily 
address a Being who is supposed to have His chief residence 
in "The City That Lieth Four-Square." He has gone to 
"prepare a place" for these. His "peculiar people." It is 
for these I have chiefly written. The first twenty chapters 
treat of such matters, revealed and speculative, in which the 
saints have always been deeply interested ; into the twenty-first 
chapter I have gathered some of the poetic gems that adorn 
our literature, and will help and comfort, and inspire all 
who will read them. It is the hope of the author that his 
book will be helpful to all who read it, but especially to those 
who are called upon to walk in the deep valleys from which 
the sunlight, for the time being, may be excluded. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER 




PAGE. 


I. 


The Imperfection of Human Knowledge i 


11. 


Look Up 


13 


III. 


Heaven Indescribable 


25 


IV, 


Heaven a Place and a State 


37 


V. 


Immortality and Nature 


47 


VI. 


Immortality and Reason 


59 


VII. 


Immortality and the Bible 


67 


Vlli. 


Glimpses of God's Universe 


75 


IX. 


Room in Heaven 


89 


X. 


The Beauty of Heaven 


. lOI 


XL 


The Richest City 


. Ill 


XIL 


The Enjoyments of Heaven 


121 


XIII. 


The Employments of Heaven 


• 135 


XIV. 


Heaven's Music .... 


. 147 


XV. 


Satisfied 


. 161 


XVI. 


Faith and Hope .... 


173 


XVII. 


Personalities .... 


183 


XVIII. 


Sorrow and Heavek .... 


193 


XIX. 


Borderland .... 


209 


XX. 


How is Heaven Attained ? . 


. 223 


XXI. 


Poetic Literature 


• 233 



The Imperfection of Human KNO^^^LEDGE. 



'IT DOTH NOT YET APPEAR WHAT WE SHALL BE.' 



"No Star is ever lost we once have seen, 

We always may be what we might have been ; 
Since Good, though only thought, has life and breath, 

God's life — can always be redeemed from death; 
And evil, in its nature, is decay, 

And any hour can blot it all away; 
The hopes that lost in some far distance seem. 

May be the truer hfe, and this the dream." 



'A. A. Procter 



CHAPTER I. 

THE IMPERFECTION OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 

''For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face 
to face."— I. Cor. XII., 12. 

In the Revised Version, this passage is translated, "For 
now we see in a mirror darkly, (or enigmatically,) but then 
face to face." 

Is it any wonder that our knowledge of Heaven is im- 
perfect? We are living now in the land of shadows; soon 
shall come for us all the transition into the land of realities. 
What knowledge we have, aside from direct revelation, of 
the invisible, is such as is more or less clearly suggested 
by the visible. Thus, also, from the natural we draw our 
inferences in regard to the spiritual. Our ideas of the eter- 
nal are always and necessarily strongly tinctured, not to 
say tainted, by our ideas of the temporal. This is what is 
meant by ''seeing in a mirror"; we see reflections and 
shadows only. While by "seeing face to face" is meant 
that we shall see the things themselves; that we shall see 
them as they really are. 

But why marvel at the obscurity of revelation? that 
shadows and clouds close in " The City Four-Square" ? Is 
there not more or less obscurity in all knowledge ? Even in 
the objective sciences, in the fields of knowledge most thor- 
oughly explored, and best known? How darkly, for ex- 
ample, did the early astronomers see astronomical data 
now clearly known by every school-boy; how far beyond 
their wildest dreams the astronomical facts now recorded 
in every almanac. But all that is now known of the starry 
firmament is nothing more than the alphabet with which 
the glowing chapters of the heavens are yet to be written. 
We see, as yet, through glasses, or lenses, darkly. 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Electricity as a remarkable phenomenon, was known to 
Thales 600 years before Christ, and its wonderful proper- 
ties and uses have been discovered at long intervals, and 
have required such men as Galvani, Faraday, Franklin, 
Bell, Edison, Marconi, and a long line like them. For cen- 
turies the electric science was a dark one, and later, an art 
full of dark riddles, of profound problems, and yielding re- 
luctantly every spark of light. And even now, when elec- 
tric wires girdle the globe, conducting the current through 
the oceans and seas, since this mysterious force has turned 
darkness into light, since we have the modern marvels of 
the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, and wireless teleg- 
raphy, — shall we say that we have exhausted the possi- 
bilities of electricity ? Its applications have been multiplied, 
but its ultimate nature no one understands, no, not even its 
chief wizard, ISIr. Thomas Edison. Revelations still more 
remarkable would cause us little surprise, for, as the world 
grows older, we learn the lesson of the Scripture which 
stands at the head of this chapter, and never expect to have 
perfect mastery of any force of this world, or to uD'ierstand 
its ultimate nature. 

In the subjective sciences we are confronted by the same 
law. Long and earnestly have men striven to discover and 
classify the laws of thought, emotion and character. Many 
systems of philosophy have been devised; some have lived 
longer than others, but most of them have fallen into decay, 
and all have changed as time has brought clearer or more 
abundant light. Thus has knowledge always been frag- 
mentary; we know only in part, and we can, therefore, 
teach only in part. 

In all this, howevei, we discover an admirable design 
upon the part of our Creator. For, with such fragmentary 
knowledge, with this mere taste of the Peierean Spring, 
we thirst more and more for its crystal waters, we hunger 
all the more for the bread of Truth, and thus have men 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

enriched not only the arts and sciences, commerce and let- 
ters by their discoveries, but they have, meantime been 
brought into intimate contact with the laws of God, they 
have been made to feel the infinity of His perfections, the 
finiteness but wonderful and delightful expansibility of 
their own talents and capacities. 

If now we turn to social problems, we shall find the same 
law. How intricate, how complicated beyond all solution 
is the so-called Labor Problem. It is easy to say that the 
Golden Rule is its only solution, but how to work it out in 
practical life, — who tells? How shall intemperance be 
destroyed root and branch? Can anyone propound 
anything more than a mere theory ? No satisfactory, practi- 
cable answer has yet been found. Legislatures, 
ecclesiastical organizations have fulminated against it, moral 
suasion, men with their logic, and women with their tears, 
have all alike failed thus far to give a workable and efltective 
answer. And intemperance, in this, the first decade of 
the 2oth century of the year of grace, is more wide-spread, 
more diabolical, more brazen, more ruinous than ever. 

So, too, in the "providences of God," to "reconcile the 
ways of God to man," we have no adequate light. Mere 
reason cannot satisfactorily explain these providences, 
wars, famines, plagues, conflagrations, and disasters: doubt- 
less, in many instances they subserve the divine purpose, 
but, usually in ways beyond human cognizance. 

Even matters of revelation and faith are more or less be- 
clouded; not that there is doubt in faith, for "he that doubt- 
eth is condemned," but we cannot know the "how" or the 
**why" of many things we steadfastly believe. Heaven with 
its employments and joys, our resurrection bodies, the ap- 
pearance and character of angelic beings, the Holy Trinity, 
the blessed Incarnation; but vision is clarified by contem- 
plation, and hence the chapters that follow. 

However, it must not be forgotten that there are many 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

matters of spiritual knowledge and faith which we may- 
discern with the utmost clearness: all those matters upon 
which our duty, our usefulness and serenity depend; our 
natural sinfulness, the divine remedy in the blood of Jesus 
Christ, the witness of the Holy Spirit, our conscious and 
present salvation, our brightening hopes of Heaven, — here 
we are, as God's children, in the realm of certainties. 
''Whereas I once was blind now I see." I know that I see. 
A hungry man eats though he may not be able to explain 
the processes of digestion and assimilation. A well man 
walks, and a bird flies though they cannot explain the mus- 
cular movements, gravitation, the correllation of forces in- 
volved in flying and walking. 

The mirror in which we must study ''the things which are 
above," may be polished to a high degree, so that we are 
able to see them more clearly, if not fully, in their true 
self and relations. "Blessed are the pure in heart for they 
shall see God." A French writer has said regretfully, 
"There is in each of us a poet that died young." But it 
is the characteristic of Christianity, with its holy faith and 
hope, to renew our faculties, to clear our vision, to give 
us inspiration, and keep young this "inborn poet," with 
all the dewy freshness of youth. The fountain that Ponce 
de Leon sought for in vain is the fountain that was opened 
for sin and uncleanness in the House of King David. It 
is by this "washing of regeneration," by the beatific vision 
that the "inborn poet" is kept alive to the extreme verge 
of this life. 

To resume the figure of the Revised Version, the mirror 
is tarnished by the false theories of men; because men do 
not "reason together with God," but in selfish and darken- 
ing isolation. One of these false theories is that no atten- 
tion need be paid in youth to the formation of the moral 
and spiritual character; whatever the indifference, vices 
and ignorance of youth, there is a wide-spread supposition, 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

acted on by parents and children, that, as the years go by 
and maturity comes, our characters will become what they 
ought to be, and that by evolutionary processes, we will 
become in thought and life what we should be. This is 
an assumption that has blinded many thousands, and finally 
cheated them of happiness here, and of Heaven yonder. 
Another mistake, the converse of the one just named, is to 
suppose that the adult character is unchangeable; that 
men with fixed habits must forever be controlled by such 
habits; that the iron mould cannot be broken; that what 
we are in youth and middle life we must be forever. Away 
with such sophistries and delusions! Evil habits are rust 
that tarnish the mirror; will-power, combined with sincere 
prayer which always brings the help of God, will remove 
such tarnish, and the young will learn that as one sows 
so also must he reap, but, nevertheless, that God and human 
will combined are stronger than any habit, and that a poorly 
constructed edifice may be taken down, and plucked up by 
the roots, and a new and better one be made to take its 
place. 

Narrowness and bigotry blind the race; we are deluded 
by our prejudices and partisanship. In chromo-lithog- 
raphy, the paper, or canvas upon which the picture is to 
be printed, passes from stone to stone over a long series 
of lithographs, and from each it receives an impression dif- 
ferent from all the others, and by the combination of all 
these impressions and colors, and in that way al-me, can 
the pleasing lithograph, in its graceful outlines and varying 
colors, be produced. Let us be open to truth from whatever 
source it may come. A true man is larger than his creed, 
his political party; he can see more than one colour, and takes 
every possible impression from truth; a blind man makes 
a poor guide, and a craw-fish a poor geometer. 

But nothing so tarnishes the mirror upon which we are 
now dependent for our knowledge of "the things which are 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

above," as sin. Sin is like the interposition of an opaque 
body between the only source of light and ourselves. It 
shuts us up within ourselves; it closes our eyes so that 
we cannot see the beauties of God and His truth; it stops 
our ears so that we cannot hear the music of the spheres; 
it paralyzes our hands so that we cannot give the grip of 
s)mipathy and love; it petrifies our hearts so that we cannot 
believe, for, "with the heart man believeth unto righteous- 
ness, and with the mouth confession is made imto salvation." 

In this introductory chapter, I am endeavoring to set 
forth some of the principles which will enable us to under- 
stand the general argument of this book, and to see clearly, 
which is the duty of us all. As I have named a few things 
that tarnish the mirror, which cause the "inborn poet," 
to age prematurely, so I shall now briefly mention a few 
by means of which the mirror may be polished, and the re- 
flection made almost as clear as the original. 

Truth is kaleidoscopic, and must be viewed from every 
possible angle. No one has seen any truth who has seen 
only one side of it. No one has seen Niagara Falls who has 
seen it from the American side only, or from the Canadian 
side only, or from the river below, or the river above, or 
from a balloon only. He who has seen it from the greatest 
number of view-points, by night as well as by day, other 
things being equal, has seen it best, and has the truest con- 
ception of that waning miracle of rocks, water, mist, clouds, 
rainbows, and lunar-bows. He has the best conceptions 
of God, duty. Heaven, of "the things which are above," 
who has found the logical, ethical, moral, spiritual, experi- 
mental, and all other view-points, and has honestly given 
himself up to the holy influences which, meantime, have 
crept into his being. 

Another great mistake which the ordinary reader or ob- 
server makes, is the superficiality of his vision; his lack of 
steadfastness of gaze. We are hurried tourists when it 

8 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

comes to the spiritual universe, rather than ardent micro- 
scopic and telescopic students. We pass rapidly and 
heedlessly over the spiritual marvels that surround us, and, 
therefore, do not see the lessons which would unfold them 
selves under a more earnest and protracted gaze. I am not 
sure, but I think it is the now venerable Dr. Cuyler who 
said: "In one of the picture galleries in Germany, there 
is a painting called "Cloudland." It hangs at the end of 
a long gallery, and, at first sight, it looks like a huge, repul- 
sive daub of confused color, without form or comeliness. 
As you walk toward it, the picture begins to take shape. 
It proves to be a mass of exquisite little cherub faces, like 
those at the head of the canvas in Raphael's Sistine Madonna. 
If you come close to the picture you see only an innumerable 
company of little angels and cherubim. 

How often the soul that is frightened by trial sees nothing 
but a confused and repulsive mass of broken expectations 
and crushed hopes! But if that soul, instead of fleeing 
away into unbelief and despair, would only draw up near 
to God, it would soon discover that the cloud was full of 
angels of mercy. 

In one cherub face it would see: "Whom I love I chas- 
ten." Another angel would say: "All things work together 
for good to them that love God." In still another sweet 
face, the heavenly words are coming forth: "Let not your 
heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me." 
**In my Father's house are many mansions." "Where I 
am, there shall ye be also." 

To clarify vision, try the experiment of pleasing God 
rather than men. The path of duty is a straight path 
through the crooked ways of this world. Let any man 
follow any other path; let him endeavor so to live as to please 
all men ; let him forget God and duty, and he will, sooner or 
later, find himself upon a path of endless windings and 
twistines and intersections, and in such entanglements 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

that extrication is well-nigh an impossibihty ; and he will 
find, too, at the end, that he has failed both in pleasing his 
fellow-men and his God. What a lamentable failure is 
that! But duty, while not always an easy road, is always 
safe, and leads directly to the face, and to the glory, of God. 

Neither can we understand this world, or the world to 
come, unless we consider each in the light of the other. 
Nothing aids one more in solving a problem than to get into 
the design of the maker of the problem; to see the purpose 
of the author in its construction, — then, assuming his stand- 
point, and reversing the order of his synthesis we attain to 
a clear solution, or analysis. No one can explain this 
world from the standpoint of this world alone. No one 
can understand Heaven unless he allows the light of this 
world to shine upon it. God gave us this life from His 
standpoint of the eternal, "the things which are above," 
and it is only when we place ourselves at His side, when we 
remember our immortality, that we are free moral agents, 
that we have been redeemed, made heirs of God and joint 
heirs with Jesus Christ, — looking at our life here from these 
lofty planes, we can then see moral and spiritual realities 
in unobscured light. When Farragut, the great commodore, 
steamed up Mobile bay, he had to pass, at the entrance of 
that bay, forts Gaines and Morgan; but, lashing two of 
his vessels together, and, climbing to the main-top of his 
flagship, the Hartford, he so directed the battle that the 
forts were soon silenced, and his formidable antagonist, 
the great iron ram, the Tennessee, lowered the bars and 
stripes. 

If we would see clearly, in the fierce conflicts of life, we 
must get out of, and above, the clouds. Ah, if we could but 
stand high enough, how clear and radiant would all things 
be. Even the dark chapters of our own lives, so inexplicable 
to cur best faith and philosophy; but the morning is coming; 
we shall see Him "face to face"; yonder in the East are rosy 

[O 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

tints brightening into white, luminous light. Patience, 
brother, darkness shall flee away, riddles shall be solved, 
meantime we walk by faith sublime, a faith which never 
misleads us. 

Early one summer morning, a party of us commenced 
the ascent of a mountain; we were going east, hence the 
shadows v/ere upon us, but our train bore us gradually 
but surely up the mountain's side, through the mists and 
clouds, by the side of frightful precipices, through black 
tunnels, over high and quaking bridges, — but we knew that 
we were ascending, and we knew, too, that upon the other 
side of the mountain range, the sun was shining, and that 
''the god of day" was climbing to meet us upon the summit 
of the mountains. So, we sped on and still on above the 
mists of the valley now far beneath us, above the clouds 
even, our landscape becoming more and more extended 
until, when noon came, we had reached the summit, and 
the sun stood in the full and unobscured glories of his me- 
ridian splendors, and we could now plainly see what a 
magnificent triumph of engineering it was to lift a train of 
cars from the valleys below to the lofty altitude where we 
stood in rapture. 

My brother-pilgrim, let us climb on and up, though we 
have no train to lift us out of this ''vale of tears." Let us 
climb by hope and faith, by holy endeavor, knowing full 
well that the sun is shining on the other side, that the gates 
of "The Four-Square City" are all open: on the East for 
the admission of those who come in the morning of life, 
whom Jesus took in His arms, and said: "Of such is the 
kingdom of Heaven"; on the West that even those who 
come late, at the eleventh hour, may still be admitted ; on 
the North that the cold and astute, the cultured and cere- 
monious, may find a place of entrance; on the South that 
the impulsive andfinformal, the sensational and enthus- 
iastic may not be excluded; knowing, too, that when we 



II 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

shall have reached the summit of this life, the full light will 
then burst upon us. Death is not in a valley; it is on a 
mountain peak of rapture and vision; it is where the glory 
of Eternity kisses away the darkness of Time. On that 
lofty peak and far beyond, if not before, we shall know why 
it was necessary for us to pass through the blinding mists, 
the dark tunnels, over the quaking bridges, by the side of 
such frightful chasms; then, too, how we shall admire, 
how we shall praise, love and adore the skill and power, 
the divine guidance that have brought us up "out of great 
tribulation, and made us white in the blood of the Lamb," 
and exalted us into undreamt-of light, and to heights 
supernal. 



12 



Look up. 



THE SENSES OF THE SPIRIT. 



I see, I taste, I touch and smell, 

God, thou makest all things well, — 

1 hear the music of the spheres, 
My senses thrill, my soul reveres. 

FAITH is the calm and brilliant eye 
Which mirrors all the extended sky, — 
It looks beyond, afar, above. 
It kindles into flames of love. 
The voice of God, OBEDIENCE hears, 
That voice commands the rolling spheres: 
How sweet to hearken and obey, 
To walk with God the heavenly way. 
Washed in the blood, the soul is PURE, 
The beatific visions lure 
Us on the Mount of God to climb. 
Where joys abide most sweet, sublime. 
LOVE is the glorious sun on high. 
That melts the rocks, and dries the eye; 
Love is the fire that warms us here. 
Burns up our sins, dispels all fear. 
HOPE sees the silver lining bright, 
And beautifies each cloud ®f night; 
Hope anchors us to God's white throne, 
While Heaven smiles, — we're not alone. 
FAITH, HOPE and LOVE, with PURITY, 
OBEDIENCE,— these senses free. 
Look up to God; to heavenly things. 
And lift the soul on tireless wings. 



CHAPTER 11. 



LOOK UP. 



This book is a study of some of the things which are 
above. We forget what is above in our excessive interest 
in what is beneath and around us. There is much below 
us that we must see and handle. There is much about us 
that thrills us and compels our attention and holds it. Our 
feet are both firmly planted in the soil of this world. Our 
hands naturally hang down by our side and are not easily 
held long above the head. Our eyes even, more easily look 
down than straight out in horizontal lines, or upwards 
toward the zenith. The whole force of gravitation on this 
planet draws us towards its center; on this planet we must 
live, and from it we cannot rise; in it we bury all we prize, 
and are ourselves buried at last. What we eat and drink 
and wear is all from below. Our business, our travels, our 
friends, our enterprises, our pleasures, — all pertain to the 
earth and require no upward sweep of the vision. Our 
affections even, our hopes and faith are inextricably blended 
with the things of this world. 

Thus we see that we have a strong affinity for this world ; 
we are "of the earth earthy." It is natural for us to love 
the flowers, the birds, our habitat, the beauties, in their 
alm6st infinite variety, of inanimate nature ; neither is there 
any law, human or divine, against such love or affinity, and 
I have not forgotten: ''Love not the world, neither the 
things that are in the world; if any man love the world, the 
love of the Father is not in him." There is danger of un- 
conscious pantheistic worship, or unconscious naturalism, 
of deistic materialism. Our philosophy, all our science is 
materialistic ; commercialism and restless, unsatisfied social- 
ism is the key-note of the beginning of this century, but will 

15 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

not be of its close. No motto is more needed than the one of 
a great young people's society of these days: — "Look up and 
Lift up." 

Into the midst of this condition, this reducing everything 
to practical utilities, this unholy ambition to become mil- 
lionaires, multi-millionaires and bilHonaires, the voice of 
God is sharply thrown as a discordant note: — "Love not 
the world, neither the things that are of the world." " If ye, 
then, be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, 
where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God." "Set your 
affection on things which are above, and not on things which 
are on the earth." 

These are clarion notes, but unheeded by most men. 
The Word of God everywhere treats man, and of man, as a 
spirit, as an immortal being. He is dealt with in harmony 
with that subHme statement found in the first chapter of 
the first book in the Bible: " So God created man in His own 
image, in the image of God created He him." He was 
created "in righteousness and true holiness." Such terms 
are not at all applicable to man's body, but only to his spirit. 

Man was made to look up; he is not a quadruped, but a 
biped. His head is held aloft; it crowns the marvellous 
frame-work of his body. Man is not a burrowing-owl that 
makes its stolen home with the prairie-dogs under the 
ground ; nor the cuckoo that lays its eggs in a nest built by 
other feathered architects; but man has the instinct of home; 
he is the great home-builder; he builds and beautifies for 
himself his earthly residence, and gathers into it all his most 
highly-prized treasures. 

He is never to be a vagrant, never to be without a home, — 
a home here, and a Home hereafter, how inspiring the 
thought! From the home here he is at once to enter into 
the "mansion" prepared for him by the Architect of this 
universe. All true men have this home instinct, this up- 
ward trend and ambition. 



i6 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

No; man is not the burro wing-owl that steals a home 
from other animals more industrious than himself, but he 
is rather like the eagle whose home is far aloft, in some in- 
accessible height, unapproached, and inapproachable by the 
haunts of other animals, and who never seems to be so happy 
as when soaring above all mists and clouds, with his un- 
blenched eye fixed upon the orb of day; with ease he main- 
tains himself in the purest and sweetest air that is to be 
found only in the lofty altitudes where he loves to soar and 
spend most of his time. It is no wonder that an inspired 
poet wrote: — "They that wait upon the Lord, shall renew 
their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; 
they shall run and not be weary ; they shall walk and not 
faint." That was a wise child who could so readily classify 
the Emperor William when he asked the school-children to 
what kingdom he belonged; they had already said, in answer 
to his interrogatories, that the crystal belongs to the mineral 
kingdom; the flower to the vegetable kingdom." ''But," 
asks the king, "to what kingdom do I belong?" Shall the 
answer be: "To the animal kingdom?" The trap has been 
artfully set by the king. That is always the answer of the 
world. But a wise child, herself the best type of the King- 
dom of Heaven, answered: "You belong to the Kingdom of 
God." 

Man has a dual nature. By his body and his five senses 
he is related to and connected with this earth. But, by 
his spirit, by his real ego, and by his five spiritual senses he 
is related to, and connected with God. The eyes can be 
lifted, even if it does require a little more effort than to look 
down; the hands may reach up and grasp and hold to that 
which is above with a steady, unyielding grasp; the feet, 
one at a time, may be lifted from the ground to which they 
are so germane, and, by means of ladders, they may lift 
the whole body to higher levels. 



17 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

*'Wc have not wings, we cannot soar, 
But we have hands and feet to climb, 

By slow degrees, by more and more, 
The cloudy summits of our time." 

Man, has indeed, a physical environment which, as we 
have seen, fascinates and holds him in thrall; it is often a 
most pleasing bondage. This environment pours in upon 
him through five avenues of his body: sight, hearing, smell, 
taste and feeling. Millions of God's creatures know no 
higher bliss than that which they receive through these 
"golden pipes." 

But there is also a true and easily recognizable spiritual 
environment; more real, more satisfying, more elevating than 
that which appeals to the physical side of our dual nature. 
And, as man has five physical senses, so he has also, at least 
five spiritual: they are Faith, Love, Purity, Obedience and 
Hope. Through these he is able to come into sympathetic, 
intelligent and conscious correspondence with his spiritual 
environment. 

What is this environment? What are the 'things which 
are above ? " Their location is not a matter of geography, or 
topography. They are simply supernatural things, and do 
not, nor can they, appeal to any of the physical senses. They 
all appertain to man's spiritual and intellectual being rather 
than to his physical. They are God, love, peace, gentleness, 
goodness, righteousness, truth, holiness, — all the "fruits of 
the Spirit," the Holy Trinity, and all that emanates from that 
glorious Personality; our future abode, our manner of life 
there, angels and redeemed men, in short, — all that pertains 
to spiritual life and potencies, and the means of their attain- 
ment and fruition. Whenever we meditate upon these 
things, when we strive after them, then are we "looking up," 
for these are all above the natural man. He cannot think 
upon them, much less can he personate and exemplify 

i8 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

them, without rising in the scale of life, without having the 
"more abundant life." 

While our Hmits will not admit of an extended discussion 
of the spiritual senses, we cannot refrain from writing a few 
sentences on these marvellous means of coming into touch 
with the things which are above. 

Faith is the eye of the soul. It sees, in the spiritual realm, 
what our eyes see of beauty, of form and color, of vastness 
and sublimity, in the natural world. ''Without faith it is 
impossible to please God." "He that cometh to Him must 
believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that 
diligently seek Him." Faith looks up and forward. It looks 
at spiritual potencies, and trusts them. Faith is related to 
Truth in the same way that the organ of vision is related to 
light. Each is indispensable to the other. Each acts as 
a tonic to the other. Faith embraces truth, and it is the 
truth thus incarnated that makes men free. Faith gives 
serenity, and reduces to practical experience all the promises 
of the Father. Some one has truly and aptly given us this 
joyous note: — 

"The Httle birds trust God, for they go singing 

From northern woods where autumn winds have blown; 
With joyous faith their trackless pathway winging 
To summer lands of song, afar, unknown. 

And if He cares for them through wintry weather. 

And will not disappoint one little bird, 
Will He not be as true a Heavenly Father 

To every soul who trusts His holy word ? 

Let us go singing, then, and not go sighing, 
Since we are sure "our times are in His hand," 

Why should we weep, and call it dying ? 
'Tis only flitting to a Summer Land." 

19 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Whittier, too, sings the lesson of faith, as he learned it 
from the birds, and well he may, for the little ruby-throated 
humming-bird that measures only two inches across its 
extended wings, flies through the "desert and illimitable 
air," from Central America to the coasts of Labrador and 
back again every year: — 

''There is a power whose care 
Teaches thy way along the pathless coast, 

The desert and illimitable air, 
Lone wandering, but not lost. 

He who from zone to zone 

Guides through the boundless air thy certain flight. 
In the long way that I must tread alone. 

Will guide my steps aright." 

Purity is another of the soul's senses. "The pure in 
heart shall see God." The beatific vision is limited to him 
who has "clean hands, and a pure heart." It is he that 
"shall ascend into the hill of the Lord," where alone the 
beatific vision may be had. If we have not spiritual purity 
we are not, therefore, disqualified from seeing many things 
that are quite worth the while, but we are positively thus 
disquaHfied from seeing God. The law is as infallible as 
any in optics, as that the angle of incidence is equal to angle 
of reflection. "Follow peace with all men, and hoHness 
without which no man shall see the Lord." 

Obedience, too, is an avenue which opens up direct com- 
munication between the human soul and its God. "To 
obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat 
of rams." It is always "the wilHng and obedient that eat 
the fat of the land." Obedience implies the surrender of 
our will to the will of God. It is in this way only that you 
can know the will of another, and enter into the interior of 



20 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

his life. This antagonizing our own wills when they are in 
conflict with the divine will, this crucifying of self, this put- 
ting of the dagger of self-denial to the very core of our being, 
is the most difficult thing we are called upon to do in the 
whole range of our ethical and spiritual lives, but it must be 
done if we would know the mind of Christ, and the good will 
of God. This is what is meant by "walking with God," 
as Enoch did. ''Can two walk together except they be 
agreed"? "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, 
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life I now live in 
the flesh, I live by the faith, (or obedience) of the Son of 
God who loved me, and gave Himself for me." 

"But we never can prove the delights of His love 

Until all on the altar we lay: 
For the favor He shows, and the joys He bestows, 

Are for those who will trust and obey." 

Love is another, the most sensitive avenue between God 
and man. "If ye love me, ye will keep my command- 
ments." Love and obedience are vitally related, and they 
are both eternal; they will never pass away. Faith will 
finally be lost in sight; hope will dissolve in sweet fruition, 
but love and obedience and purity are fundamental and 
eternal. Love is the fii'st and the last word of Christian 
experience; it is always and forever "more love," and there 
can be nothing higher. 

Love is of God, for " God is Love." Fear and love cannot 
co-exist, for "perfect love casteth out all fear." Man's love 
is fickle, but God's love is constant; the love of man is but a 
feeble reflection of God's love, as the moon's Hght is but 
reflected sunhght; it is a drop out of a boundless and ex- 
haustless ocean. Love makes us love not only the lovely 
but the unlovely as well. Love opens our eyes to the virtues 
of m«n and women; to the value of their souls; it discovers 



21 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOURSQUARE. 

worth and merit where Hate and Indifference see only the 
reprehensible. Love never wearies; it labors on like Jacob 
for a long-delayed Rachel. Love bridges every chasm, and 
marches bravely over all social distinctions and conven- 
tionalisms, and unites a royal Jonathan, of the king's family, 
and heir to a throne, to a humble shepherd-boy from the 
country sheep-cote, and places royal robes upon his 
shoulders. Love solves the deepest spiritual problems, and 
helps us to classify ourselves as well as others; ''for we 
know that we have passed from death unto life, because 
we love the brethren." ''Behold what manner of love the 
Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the 
sons of God." 

The most nervous, the most compact, the most fecund 
sentences that have ever been written or spoken are those 
which attempt to describe love. No sentence can be found 
in any language into which have been crowded eleven such 
stupendous thoughts as are found in John III., i6. "For 
God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, 
but have everlasting life." 

1. God: the eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, glorious, 
unfathomable, ubiquitous, — Hea^ven's chief, attraction, and 
the cause and center of all pure bliss. 

2. Love: all sweetness, all goodness, all tenderness, all 
peace and purity are in love, and love is the very essence of 
the divine Being. 

3. So: O, the height and depth, the length and breadth 
of that little word of two letters ! No plummet can sound 
its depths, no imagination, however gifted, can scale its 
heights. 

4. World, an inexhaustible repository of material things, 
and the residence of at least fifteen hundred millions of 
human beings or spiritual personaUties. 

5. Gave: — this is the very essence of Christianity. God 

22 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

gave His Son; the Son gave Himself; the Holy Ghost gives 
Himself constantly, and you, too, must give yourself, or you 
can have no part in the system which is one strictly of giving. 
No word in the language goes nearer to the very heart of 
Christianity than this word. 

6. His Only-Begotten Son: He is the radiant and 
central Personality of all the ages. As Richter said : ^'The 
purest among the mighty and the mightiest among the pure, 
who, with His pierced hand, has hfted empires from their 
foundations, turned the streams of history into new channels, 
and still continues to rule and to guide the ages." 

7. Whosoever: Blessed, comprehensive word, worthy to 
stand in this marvellous aggregation of words, — deep as 
sin and hell, high as Heaven and Love; broad enough to 
take in the writer and the reader of these lines. — All glory 
be to the Holy Trinity. 

8. Believe: Faith is the most potent, the first and the 
last, the most pervasive of all the human elements of our 
salvation. 

9. Life: All life, "the more abundant life," immortality. 
Who can unravel the mysteries of life? Its origin, its 
transmission, its phenomena, its futurity? 

10. Death: The saddest of all words, but here a vanish- 
ing, paling word, like the shadow of a dark night before 
the dawning of a glorious morning. Death is swallowed up 
of Life. "O, Death, where is thy sting? O, Grave, 
where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the 
strength of sin is the law, but, thanks be unto God who 
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

11. Eternal: We have to do, in all these words, with 
immeasurable increments, with unending duration, and with 
the greatest spiritual potencies in the universe. 

Even the logical particle which introduces this matchless 
sentence is full of meaning, and the only preposition, in, is 
much more than a mere connective; we believe on Him as 

23 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

one may suspend himself by a rope over a yawning chasm; 
but, more than that, deeper and sweeter, we beHeve in 
Him; we beHeve ourselves into Him, into His life, into His 
wounds. His love, His sorrows and feHcities. 

These, then, my dear reader, are a few of the preliminary 
thoughts concerning the "things which are above." They 
are to guide us in the chapters which follow. It is the earnest 
and sincere prayer of the writer that his little book may be 
conducive to heavenly-mindedness, that it may help some- 
what in bridging the many chasms of hf e ; that it may throw 
a ray of light into the many dark corners of this life; that it 
may sweeten the bitter cups that must be pressed to the lips 
of all; that it may stimulate a spirit of devotion, brighten the 
hopes, clear the eye of faith, produce a more perfect obedi- 
ence, aid in perfecting thy love, and in making thy purity 
white as the driven snow, by the blessings of God, thy 
prayers, the sweet influence of the Holy Spirit, and the radi- 
ant, indwelling presence of the divine Christ. 

''For what abides that we should look on here? 
The heavens are better than this earth below, 

They are of more account and far more dear; 
We will look up, for all most sweet and fair, 
Most pure, most excellent, is garnered there." 



24 



Heaven Indescribable. 



"Glory beyond all glory ever seen 

By waking sense or by the dreaming soul; 

The appearance instantaneously disclosed, 

Was of a mighty city; boldly say 

A wilderness of building, sinking far 

And self -withdrawn into a boundless depth 

Far sinking into splendour — without end. 

Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold, 

With alabaster domes, and silver spires, 

And blazing terrace upon terrace, high 

Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright, 

In avenues disposed; there towers begirt 

With battlements that on their restless fronts 

Bore stars, — illumination of all gems. 

O, 'twas an unimaginable sight." 

— Wordsworth. 



CHAPTER III. 

Heaven Indescribable. 

The question has often come to our hearts and minds, 
"Why has so httle been revealed to us of Heaven?" Why 
do so many questions remain unanswered by the Word? 
Why is there not more detail in Revelation, especially con 
cerning our future abode and destiny? 

Anyone, however, who will make a special study of the 
Bible, will be surprised at the volume of revelations made, 
and also at the large number of details that are given us 
concerning "Yonderland." 

Again: if all were told us, our faith would be staggered; 
such revelation would be incredible. "Neither would they 
believe though one should arise from the dead." The divine 
wisdom of the Book and its heavenly origin are shown in 
nothing better than in the fact that its Author knows human 
nature perfectly, and has adapted both the quantity and 
the quality of revealed truth to man as he is now constituted, 
and to his present relations. 

"Now we see through a glass darkly," (and it is better 
so,) "but then face to face; now I know in part, but then 
shall I know even as also I am known." All human knowl- 
edge is fragmentary that there may be more room for faith, 
and that there may be a spur to our mental industry. "But 
when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in 
part shall be done away." 

Often there are glories here, and sorrows, too, that are 
well-nigh insufferable. Just now, on this 30th day of 
December, I look out of my study window upon the newly- 
fallen snow which covers everything in unbroken and im- 
maculate whiteness, each flake retaining its crystalline 
structure in the rare, cold air; above, notwithstanding the 

27 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

cold, the brilliant, full-orbed sun shines from a cloudless 
sky, and every snow-crystal sparkles and glows like a first- 
water diamond, so that the eyes are dazzled and blinded by 
the insufferable light, and automatically seek the protection 
of nature's curtains dropped down over the contracted 
pupils. So it would be if Heaven's full glory were revealed ; 
we could not bear it; there must new adjustments first be 
made; our spirits must first have a new enswathement. 
Sometimes we feel that it is long waiting, and, with Wesley, 
we cry: — 

"O, would He more of Heaven bestow. 

And let the vessels break. 
And let our ransomed spirits go 

To grasp the God they seek. 
In rapturous awe on Him to gaze. 

Who bought the sight for me, 
And shout and wonder at His grace 

Through all eternity." 

There must first be not only bodily, but a spiritual adjust- 
ment. The former will, doubtless, be instantaneous, and 
awaits us in the future in our resurrection bodies. However, 
Ulrici taught that we already have our spiritual bodies, that 
they now are the enswathement of our spirits ; this theory was 
defended by Joseph Cook, taught by Bishop Randolph S. 
Foster, and is held by many thinkers and saints. But the 
latter, that is our spiritual adjustment, must go on every 
day in our increasing fervency, our brightening hopes, our 
more conquering faith, and our more immaculate purity. 

It is a principle of human nature to attempt the impossible. 
Thus it has often been found that the impossible is not so, 
and some of the most helpful books, the most practical in- 
ventions, and most brilliant discoveries have crowned the 
faith and efforts of brave men and women who have dared 

28 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

to attempt the ''impossible." Who shall describe Heaven 
for us ? While millions of our fellow-men have entered the 
"City That Lieth Four-Square," yet not one of them has 
been permitted to return, and tell us what he has seen and 
felt and heard in that delectable City. And who else is 
competent? Yet we Join the number of those who have 
essayed the delightful task. 

But, on the threshold, we feel with Bernard of Cluny, when 
he sang: 

"Jerusalem, the golden, 

With milk and honey blest, 
Beneath thy contemplation 

Sink heart and voice oppressed : 
I know not, O I know not 

What social joys are there. 
What radiancy of glory, 

What light beyond compare." 

The Word of Revelation must be our chief guide, for it 
abounds with more than hints; there are parables and de- 
scriptions, visions and dreams; intimations of Heaven run 
through warp and woof of the unimpeachable Book like 
threads of glittering gold. In fact, every form of rhetorical 
figure, simile and metaphor, trope and hyperbole, parable 
as well as unadorned language and sober description are all 
employed by the inspired writers to reveal that which has 
not entered the mind of man to conceive. 

Then, too, since language is such an inadequate vehicle 
of thought, since colors, paints and brush, and, in this 
special case, the painter, too, is unequal to his mighty task, — 
to attempt to describe Heaven seems like the attempt 

"To gild refined gold, to paint the Hly, 
To throw perfume on the violet, 



29 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

To smooth the ice, or add another hue 
Unto the rainbow, or with taper Hght, 
To seek the beauteous eye of Heaven to garnish." 

But the fascination is upon us; as sunshine draws the 
plant or flower to itself, so are we drawn by ''the things 
which are above." "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all 
men unto myself." Let us look at some of the many sug- 
gestive figures by which Heaven is represented. It is spoken 
of as a 

Banquet. 

In this metaphor the appeal is to the hungry pilgrim, 
faint and famishing on the dusty roadside of Hfe. He may 
surely sit down "some sweet day," at His Father's table, 
and have such an abundance of spiritual and physical goods 
as millionaires and kings have been accustomed to all their 
lives here in their palaces and banquet-halls. There have 
been always, and there are still, in many places, hungry men 
and women and children. Millions have never known what 
it is to have a full meal, to eat to satiety. How terrible it is 
to be hungry, to famish and starve! Material hunger is a 
fit type of soul-hunger. More are starving their souls than 
their bodies, and soul-hunger is more direful, more lasting 
in its results than physical starvation. But there " they shall 
hunger no more neither thirst any more, for the Lamb upon 
the throne shall feed them." 

HEAVEN AN INHERITANCE. 

Here the appeal is to those who have never had Fortune 
smile upon them. No rich relative has ever left them any- 
thing. Never have they been able to enjoy the luxuries 
which come to those only who have wealth, or a competence. 

30 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Many of the fortunes of this world have come down and in- 
creased through the generations; they have been inherited, 
and they argue no special virtue in those who possess and 
control them. The instinct of possession is innate ; the desire 
to make acquisitions is normal and honorable; it is, at the 
same time, the most dangerous and inspiring principle of 
human nature. "The love of money is a root (German, 
eine Wurzel) of all evil, and it is, at the same time, the main- 
spring of all business life and aggressiveness. A very old, 
and a very rich man was asked why he toiled so hard for 
wealth when he knew that he was already rich, and that he 
might now take his ease, and that others would surely spend 
that which he had labored so hard to amass ? He replied : 
"If they find as much pleasure in spending my savings as 
I have had in their acquisition, they are very welcome to 
spend them all." Heaven is the true Savings' Bank where 
we may, and where all the truly wise, do lay up their treas- 
ures; it is the only safe Bank, "where moth and rust do no 
corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal." 
Wise men, or those who have spiritual thrift, make accumula- 
tions now for their inheritance and enjoyment in the future. 



HEAVEN A KINGDOM. 

Perhaps no thought is sweeter than the thought of power. 
To sit upon a throne, even if it be only the throne of one's 
own being; to be king of all your faculties, passions and 
desires: to rule your own spirit, — what an exquisite spiritual 
deHght! "He that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he 
that taketh a city." But the promise to the saints is that 
they shall sit upon thrones, and exercise sovereignty over 
the myriads of God's known and unknown realms. They 
shall have crowns for their brows and scepters for their hands, 
like the veritable kings and queens they are. 

3^ 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

"Ye stars are but the shining dust 

Of my divine abode, 
The pavement of the heavenly courts 

Where I shall reign with God." 

HEAVEN A PARADISE. 

That is, it is a place; a place of physical delights, for we 
must hold to the materiality of Heaven; a spiritualized 
materiality is much more satisfactory to all the requirements 
of conscious existence than our present mode of life and en- 
vironment, however satisfactory that may be, and these are 
good bodies, and this is a good world. Paradise means 
rivers and fountains; it means fruits and flowers, singing 
birds and happy angels ; it means blazing but mellow light, 
and health-giving, ozonic atmosphere ; it means crowns with 
glorious stars corruscating with mingling colors and lights; 
it means "white stones" and golden harps, and all possible 
musical instruments and unknown devices for the production 
of musical sounds as still an inedaquate expression of the 
deeper music forever singing itself in the ecstatic soul. 
Paradise! It means constellations, planets and suns, a 
universe to explore as we shall see in coming chapters. 
Who shall describe for us the Paradise of God ? Its climate, 
its beauties, its riches, its angels, who have "kept their first 
estate"? its blood-washed millions, its cherubim and ser- 
aphim, its myriads of children who have never known sin, 
its Presence divine, its Holy Trinity, — all throbbing with 
conscious existence, "the more abundant life," and thrilling 
with physical, intellectual and spiritual potencies more and 
more as the cycles of eternity roll on? Well may Faber 
sing:— 

"O Paradise! O Paradise! 

Who would not crave for rest? 
Who would not seek that happy land 



32 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Where they that love are blest? 
Where loyal hearts and true 

Stand ever in the light, 
All rapture through and through, 

In God's most holy light." 

HEAVEN A TEMPLE, A SANCTUARY. 

Not unfrequently is Heaven declared to be a Temple, a 
Sanctuary. By this suggestive figure is brought to our 
minds that employment on earth which has been the most 
helpful and sweet of all our earthly engagements. The 
spirit of every true Christian is always that of David when 
he sang: — 

''How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts. My 
soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; 
my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God." 
''For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had 
rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell 
in the tents of wickedness." "One thing have I desired of 
the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house 
of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of 
the Lord, and to enquire in his temple." 

Just as, by nature, we have the instinct of immortality, 
or of acquisition, so man has the instinct of worship, and 
will have it forever; that instinct is the consummate flower 
and adornment of his spiritual nature; it is the turning of 
the creature to his Creator; the child putting his little hand 
into the almighty hand of the Father. 

The giving of thanks, the outward and physical expression 
of the mighty tide of gratitude and praise that will forever 
surge through his redeemed and glorified personality, will be 
perfectly germane to his being and environments. And 
while this may not touch some as nearly (who, still, through 
God's abundant grace, may gain admission to the Celestial 

33 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

City) as others, yet it is an essential part of the being and 
character and the employment of every true child of God, 
no matter in what world he may have his residence. 

Thus, in these few descriptions, selected from many, we 
can see how language is strained, metaphor crowded even 
by the inspired writers, to make known that which is essen- 
tially unknowable; that which must, in the final analysis, be 
known only in experience. Honey is sweet, but only he who 
tastes it can know its flavor and sweetness. The joys of 
fatherhood, or motherhood can be known only by the 
paternal and maternal hearts. There is positively no royal 
road. 

To describe Heaven would be to paint Christ ; it would be 
the finite grasping and comprehending the Infinite. 

Our Christ is greater than man's mind; 

To highest beauty all are blind ; 

God's glory we can never see 

Till from the carnal we are free. 

The ant that hurries o'er the wall 

Of Rome's Saint Peter's, or St. Paul, 

What can it know of wall alone 

From turret to foundation stone? 

Of altars, organs, paintings, Dome, 

Of thoughts, of saints, — Devotion's home? 

What canst thou know, an ant to rove — 

Of God, His universe. His Love? 

From yonder sky a meteor fell, — 

With it canst thou Creation tell? 

We know in part, we teach in part, — 

The truly wise have humble heart. 

What can Icelandic beings know 

Of Florida? The Eskimo 

Who never saw but snow and ice, 

Of fields of bloom, of fruits and spice ? 



34 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

While thus we attempt to get into our minds and hearts 
this heavenly message, the characteristics of the ''Place 
prepared," we must bear in mind that "the half has never 
yet been told," nor can it be by student, philosopher, com- 
mentator, or poet. We can, however, show by citations from 
the Holy Scriptures, that this is not a work of the imagination, 
but, rather, that I have gathered only a few flowers that bloom 
in the fair field of Revelation; or, that, if I may be permitted 
to change the figure, I have brought from the picture-galleries 
which constitute the Bible, only a few of the most con- 
spicuous paintings which we cannot study without profit, 
without an exaltation of the spirit which tends to fit us for 
the heavenly inheritance. For "every man that hath this 
hope in Him purifieth himself even as He is pure." 

Standing under El Capitan, or in the spray of the Yosemite 
Falls, or on Inspiration Point, in the Yellowstone Park, or 
in the midst of the Alps, or at the top of Haleakala, on 
Maui, — I have been dumb; yes. Heaven is indescribable. 

In the early morning, and in the midst of the Grand 
Canon of the Colorado, Abbie A. Fairchild writes the follow- 
ing glowing description: — 

At early dawn the Canyon 

Was like a mighty sea; 
A boundless, waveless silence, 

A solemn mystery. 

But when daylight broadened 

Through that pure, crystal air. 
What palaces and temples 

Began to gHmmer there! 
As if some mighty sculptor. 

With chisel, swift and true. 
Carved portals, towers and statues 

From that dim, yielding blue. 

35 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Then glowed the splendid ciimson, 

Green, orange, pearly gray. 
While amethystine purples 

Deep down the chasm lay, 
As if some fervent artist. 

Bold, passionate and free, 
Had set his palette grandly, 

And painted lavishly. 

Forever glows the pageant; 

The sculpturesque design 
Seems typical of silence, 

And permanence divine. 
As if high-souled musicians 

Upon the canyon's brim 
Had played cathedral organs. 

And crystallized the hymn. 
We know the Master Sculptor, 

The Artist, true and free: 
O, if earth shows such wonders, 

AVhat will high Heaven be ? 

Yes, our hearts may be deeply stirred, we may even adore, 
and our raptured souls be "lost in wonder, love and praise," 
but even he that has lived in the midst of such natural 
scenery can never describe it, how much less he who has 
never seen it at all! 

"Language is all inadequate, 

Hearts are so deeply stirred! 
Worship is all the soul can feel, — 

God is the only word." 



36 



Heaven a Place and a State. 



"Self -reverence, self-knowledge, self-control: 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power. 
Yet not for power, (power of herself 
Would come uncalled for,) but to live by law; 
Acting the law we live by without fear." 

—Tennyson. 



'Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, 
And men below and saints above; 
For Love is Heaven, and Heaven is Love." 

— Scott. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HEAVEN A PLACE AND A STATE. 

"I AM the Bread of Life; he that cometh to me shall never 
hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." — 
John 6:35. 

"And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in 
them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." — 
Rev. 21:14. 

Let us get the idea well fixed in our minds that Heaven 
is a place just as truly as Boston, Chicago, or London, or 
this planet are places. "Heaven is a Prepared Place for a 
Prepared People." It may be a star, a planet, a constella- 
tion, or a group of suns and planets, but still and always, 
"a local habitation and a place." Then, there can be no 
doubt about at least, one chief, or Capital City, to describe 
which is, in part, the mission of this book. We shall find 
that an elaborate description of "The City That Lieth 
Four-Square" is given in the Bible. Numerous details of 
the Celestial City are set forth in the clearest and most 
satisfactory terms and descriptions. 

Many people are idealists, visionaries; their ideas of 
Heaven are vague, misty and nebulous, and have little 
sympathy with, or affinity for, "crowns," and "harps of gold," 
"white stones," "jasper walls," "streets of pure gold clear 
as glass," "songs like the sound of many waters," and 
"hallelujahs" that fall upon enraptured ears as the summer 
rain falls on "a dry and thirsty land." 

The Greek hero of the Odyssey, as he wanders in the nether 
world, gives us the Greek conception of Heaven, for he there 
meets his mother, and desires to embrace her, but when he 
extends his arms for that purpose, she passes through them 
like the substance of a dream, or like a shadow. The hero 

39 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

of the Odyssey, that man of wisdom, of brawn and sinew, 
a type of all realities, is bitterly disappointed with these 
evanescent shadows, with ''substances" that it is impossible 
to embrace. Now, this Greek conception stands at the 
very antipodes of the Christian. See the Gospel of Luke, as 
follows: "And as they thus spake (the apostles in a closed 
room) Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and saith 
unto them: 'Peace be unto you.' But they were terrified 
and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. 
And He said unto them : 'Why are ye troubled ? And why 
do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and 
my feet, that it is I myself; handle me and see; for a spirit 
hath not Flesh and Bones, as ye see me have.' And when 
He had thus spoken. He showed them His hands and His 
feet. And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered. 
He said unto them: 'Have ye here any meat?' And they 
gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. 
And He took it, and did eat before ihem." 

How Ulysses would have rejoiced in such a Saviour, and 
in such a conception of future existence; in a mother whose 
pure spirit was shrined in a body like that of our Lord's after 
His resurrection. 

This is a conception that satisfies us in any mode or place 
of existence, — a cognizable body; a body, however refined 
and spiritualized, that can hear and see, and has self- 
consciousness, that is tangible ; that has, in short, all the qual- 
ities and powers it now possesses, (save its weaknesses,) 
and such super-added qualities as will enable it to move at 
will from planet to planet with the ease and speed of a ray 
of light; a body above all climatic conditions; that will be 
equally at home and in supreme comfort at the lowest and 
the highest temperatures, possessing all those powers and 
traits which will perfectly adapt it to its new habitat, its 
higher mode of being. 

Away, then, with the Greek mythology, with a Dantean 

40 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Hades, or Paradise, with the nebulous dreams of the idealist 
and visionary; we want the Heaven of Christ, the Heaven 
of reason and the Bible, with its hteral revelation to be re- 
ceived in text and context, remembering too, that, though 
language may be figurative, it may still stand for the most 
tangible reahties. 

The body which our glorified spirit shall occupy, is de- 
scribed as having ''incorruption," "glory," "power," as 
being "a spiritual body." "And as we have borne the 
image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the 
heavenly." 

We may not now be able to form a satisfactory conception 
of "spiritual matter"; it seems a contradiction of terms, but 
that is only the result of the limitations of our knowledge. 
Our thought is somewhat aided when we consider the 
different forms of matter, as we know it now in crystal, or 
jewel, or steel, or snow, or vapor ; in world-stuff, in light, or 
air, or ether, for all are matter. Air, invisible and spirituelle, 
has recently, under high pressure, and by reducing it to a 
temperature of 312 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, been 
liquified; when we consider the indestructibility of matter, 
and the almost infinite variety of forms it assumes, and that 
there may be other forms that we know nothing about, we 
may still not be able to grasp the idea of "spiritualized 
matter," nor be able to understand such a body as our Lord's 
risen and ascending form, — yet, it is by such line of thinking 
that we are enabled to see that God need not depart very far 
from His ordinary methods of creation to give us bodies that 
are best described by the contradictory phrase which we 
have several times used in marks of quotation. All things 
are possible to Him within the range of His own being, will, 
and laws. 

Our risen Lord walked forty days among men before His 
ascension; He walked and conversed with men; slept and' 
ate with them, and was, if possible, more real and sympathetic 

41 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

than before His death and crucifixion. Incarnation has 
forever dignified man's body, from its conception to its 
death; Christ's resurrection is the promise of its spiritualiza- 
tion and final glorification. Human clay is dignified and 
made immortal. A religion that has no place for matter, 
here and hereafter, misses one of the fundamentals of 
Christianity. Man is all, body, soul and spirit, precious to 
God ; his body is God's temple; "if any man defile the temple 
of God, him will God destroy." Man has been redeemed 
in the trinity of his nature; redeemed, saved, sanctified, and 
he will be, finally, glorified. 

In harmony with what has been written, Matthew Arnold 
said that "the ethereal body which awaits us must be as real 
as the beef-fattened frame of the East-end butcher. The 
life amid which it will move and live must be equipped, 
enriched and diversified in a fashion corresponding with 
earthly habits, but to an extent far beyond the narrow 
vivacities of our present being." 

While Heaven is thus a place, we must hold with equal 
tenacity to the thought that it is a state also, — a state of the 
heart and mind and life, — of the entire personality. No 
one will ever pass through the "Gate of Pearl", who has 
not first passed through the narrower " Gate of Repentance" 
which stands at the beginning of the Path of Life. "Ye 
must be born again." That was spoken to a wise man by 
One who never deceived, whose precepts are all fundamental, 
g'erminal, essential. If we expect St. Peter, or some angel 
to open to us, the "Gate of Pearl," which will admit us to 
the Celestial City, we must first unbar the door of our 
stubborn hearts, and admit Him without whose abiding 
presence there can be no Heaven for anyone, or anywhere. 
The greatest of all hymnologists has well sung: — 

"Content with beholding His face. 
My all to His pleasure resigned, 



42 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

No changes of season or place 

Could make any change in my mind : 

While blest with a sense of His love, 
A palace a toy would appear, 

And prisons would palaces prove, 
If Jesus would dwell with me there." 

iiivery consideration, both for the present and future life, 
urges us to open all our life, subjective and objective, for the 
admission of Him who alone can make for us a spiritual 
Heaven, and there is none other. He is a King, and with 
Him come royal honors, emoluments beyond all human con- 
ception, insuring us Heaven both as a place and a state, 
for He has gone "to prepare us a place," and His presence 
with us and in us, is Heaven forevermore. 

Lift up, lift up the everlasting gates. 

And let your King come in! Who is this King? 

It is the King of Glory! He who lay 

A Babe in Bethlehem on Christmas Morn: 

O'er whom the angels sang in sweetest strains: 

"To you is born this day a Saviour, Christ 

The Lord ! " "Peace on earth, good-will to men." 

'Tis He of whom the prophet sang in verse 

SubUme: "For unto us a child is born; 

His name shall be called Wonderful, the Prince 

Of Peace, and Counsellor, the Mighty God, 

The Everlasting Father, and His reign 

Of Peace shall never end." 

Who is this King ? 
'Tis He who burst, resistlessly, the bars 
Of Death, and opened wide the Gates of Pearl, 
And let the light of Heaven stream to this world ; 
'Tis He who loves the race so well He shed 
His blood, a ruddy stream, on Calvary, 
To wash away the deepest stains of sin. 

43 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Lift up, lift up the rusted bars, O hearts 

Of men! O, men with hearts, and let your King 

Come in!- He stands, this best of days, and knocks; 

Hark! How He knocks with pierced Hand; by all 

Your radiant hopes of Heaven; by all your Past; 

By every fragrant flower; by every star, 

And sun, by dying Day and waking Morn. 

Come, brother, friend, five bleeding wounds, 

Whose eloquence of love the ages thrill, 

They cry to thee in plaintive, sweetest tones: 

Lift up the long-closed portals of thy life, 

And let your Friend and King, this best of days. 

Come in, that, henceforth. Peace and Heaven be thine. 

Every person who has lived long enough in this world to 
become familiar with the psychology of life, with subjective 
life and introspection, with the movements of the emotions, 
the control of the passions, the extreme difficulty of bringing 
''every thought into subjection to Jesus Christ," the readi- 
ness of the imagination to carry us into forbidden realms, 
the -finesse of temptation, the vastness and mysteries of the 
subjective world — such an one has learned, perhaps, by 
many bitter experiences, that one of the deepest truths of 
the great Teacher is His statement • that "the kingdom of 
Heaven is within you," and the implied' converse proposition 
that Hell, too, is subjective. 

Given to a soul, reconciliation with his God, his conscience, 
his record, and his fellow-men; granted forgiveness and 
conscious integrity, and the indwelling presence of the divine 
Christ, and constant victory by His grace, — such a person 
may not yet be in Heaven as an environment, but, what is 
better, he has Heaven within as a subjective and radical 
condition, place him where you will. AH else is mere en- 
vironment; perhaps, I should not say, "mere environment," 

44 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

lor there is much in environment as related to our happiness, 
and much is made of it, as we have already seen, in the Book 
of God's Revelation. But there is forever more in a psycho- 
logical Heaven than there can be in environment. The 
bitterest flames of Hell are in memory, in conscience, "the 
worm that dieth not," in spiritual darkness, in conscious 
and eternal separation from all that is good, or hopeful, or 
elevating, that is, from God ; then, too, the torturing memory 
of "what might have been." On the other hand, without 
these same elements with which the fires of hell are kindled 
and maintained, there could be no Heaven. There is, 
therefore, much in the terse saying that "every man carries 
his own brimstone." Every man, too, carries his own 
Heaven. As no two men, though they may be standing 
side by side, can see the same rainbow, or painting, so no 
two persons, though they may be husband and wife, shall ever 
live in, or see the same Heaven, either subjectively, or ob- 
jectively. But, nevertheless, the Christian has a Heaven 
here in which he may and does travel to one still higher and 
better. This is the spiritual Rock which follows us through 
all the deserts and thorny places of our pilgrimage. But it 
would be an inexcusable omission to ignore environment. 
Who that has hved, even for a short time, in the land of 
"sunshine, fruits and flowers," would, thereafter, choose 
to Hve in Greenland, or at the poles ? Who that has lived 
in a great and beautiful city, like Washington, or Paris, 
would, thereafter, be content to live on the blistering plains 
of salt, or some trackless desert? 

Heaven, as an environment, has been prepared by the 
Creator of all things, and will, for that reason, be absolutely 
perfect in itself, and in every possible adaptation. 

Shall we not, gentle reader, before proceeding to the next 
chapter, tarry a moment for self-examination and medita- 
tion ? Perchance for invocation and prayer to make siure 
of the state as being antecedent to all and most important. 

45 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

''Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and 
all these things shall be added unto you." Ah, this "king- 
dom of God," is, after all, the alpha and omega; it endures 
all climates; it abides when all things else change and fail; 
it is subjective and spiritual; it resides in the will co- 
operating with the ever-ready, and ever-available grace of 
God; it resides in the choice of man, in his choices for- 
ever repeated and running parallel with the mind of God ; 
it sings to us in the night time of our dreams and sor- 
rows; fires cannot burn it, nor waters drown it; frosts 
cannot nip it nor famines starve it; its fragrant blooms 
are sure promises of coming golden harvests; the rack 
cannot break it, nor martyrdm hush its eloquent voice of 
praise and triumph; evil men cannot pluck it out of our 
bosoms by Hes, persecutions and foul slanders; [death and 
hell cannot dismay us, while Heaven glows with more than 
mortal brightness in our bosoms. 

"When peace like a river attendeth my way, 

When sorrows like sea-billows roll — 
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say 

It is well, it is well with my soul." 



46 



Immortality and Nature. 



O, joy that in our embers 

Is something that doth hve, 

That nature yet remembers 

What was so fugitive! 
The thought of our past years doth in me breed 
Perpetual benediction; not in deed 
For that which is most worthy to be blest; 
Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, 
With new-fledged hopes still fluttering in his breast, — 

Not for these I raise 

The song of thanks and praise; 
But for these obstinate questionings 

Of sense and outward things, 

Fallings from us, banishings; 

Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized. 

High instincts before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised; 

But for those first affections. 

Those shadowy recollections. 

Which, be they what they may. 
Are yet the fountain light of all our day. 
Are yet a master light of all our seeing; 
Uphold us, cherish, and have the power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in their being 
Of the eternal Silence; truths that wake 

To perish never; 
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, 

Nor Man nor Boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish, or destroy. 

Hence in season of calm weather, 

Though inland far we be. 
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 

Which brought us hither. 

Can in a moment travel thither. 
And see the children sport upon the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 

— Wordsworth 



CHAPTER V. 

IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 

''If a man die, shall he live again?" 

A THOUSAND years before Job, men were asking that 
question. It has not yet lost its newness, or fascination. 
Let us seek an answer, first, from such light as nature and 
analogy may shed upon it. We admit, at the outset, that 
the light of nature is not satisfactory like the light of Revela- 
tion, but, nevertheless, we hold stoutly to the proposition 
that both nature and reason answer the question of Job, 
and that their answer is an affirmative one. 

Before proceeding to set forth some of the arguments sug- 
gested by nature, permit me to remind the reader that im- 
mortality is either the greatest of all blessings, or it is the 
greatest of all curses; whether it is the one of the other de- 
pends upon the character of the immortal being; some men, 
with Milton, must say, of their moral natures what he said 
of his physical condition: 

"O, dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon. 
Myself am hell." 

Shut up in the dark walls of sin, of selfishness, lust, of 
habits not to be broken by human power, what a curse to 
all such is immortality; it would have been better for them if 
they had never been born. To the good, upon the contrary, 
immortaHty is the chief est of all blessings : — 

''Immortal! Were but one immortal. 

How would others envy! How would thrones adore! 

Because 'tis common, is the blessing lost?" 

My first argument for immortality is founded upon man's 
universal conviction of immortality. See James Freeman 

49 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Clarke's ''Ten Great Religions." Especially, chapter XL 
This conviction is common to all peoples and all times. It 
is found not only among the cultivated and refined, but 
among the half- civilized and barbarous nations of the earth. 
The doctrine of immortality is taught in the Vedas of the 
Hindus; if not directly taught by Confucius, it is by him 
taught by impHcation; among the Egyptians it was forcibly 
and variously presented, and their most elaborate funeral 
customs were founded upon it; we are familiar with the prac- 
tices of the North American Indians, which were the out- 
growth of this unvarying, subjective conviction. The 
Greenland ers have a heaven of perpetual summer: there is 
no night, plenty of good water, birds, fishes, and the like. 
Even among the Africans and Patagonians, you find the 
same convictions; so, likewise, among the cannibals of the 
South Sea and Hawaiian Islands long before the entrance 
of the missionaries. It is not my purpose to do more here 
than to state the fact in crude outline. 

Whence came this conviction, and what is its significance ? 
We afiS.rm it as a principle in creation that when there is a 
common subjective conviction, there will always be found 
somewhere the corresponding objective reality. This is 
demanded by the character of the Creator. Where you find 
a fin, you will find water; the organ of sight is sufficient 
demonstration of the existence of light; where you find the 
organ of hearing, there, too, you will find sound ; thirst and 
appetite argue the existence of food and drink; the lungs 
require and imply the being of atmospheric air; this law is 
applicable to all our wants, physical, mental, and spiritual. 
There is no exception. Therefore, by a parity of reasoning, 
we safely conclude that the Creator, who has uniformly and 
deeply implanted the instinct of immortaHty, as an original 
endowment, will never disappoint it, but that, ''if a man die, 
he shaU live again." 

There are many phases of nature which, by analogy, 

50 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE 

teach the same beautiful lesson. We do not care to lay 
too much stress upon these, and yet these analogies are so 
numerous and striking that they strongly appeal not only to 
the poetic temperament, but also to our reason, and are not 
without value in the summation of the diverse arguments. 
The voices of nature may lack distinct emphasis, yet, in 
their harmony amidst all diversity, they proclaim man's im- 
mortahty. 

''There is no death! The stars go down 

To rise upon some fairer shore. 
And bright in heaven's jewelled crown 

They shine for ever more. 

There is no death! The dust we tread 
Shall change beneath the summer showers, 

To golden grain, or mellow fruits. 
Or rainbow-tinted flowers. 

There is no death ! The leaves may fall. 
The flowers may fade, and pass away — , 

They only wait, through wintry hours, 
The coming of the May." 

The succession of winter and summer, of day and 
night, the phenomena of nature, in general, — all seem to 
teach the same lesson. If matter is indestructible, much 
more so is the spirit. It is simply impossible to conceive of 
the annihilation of matter; it is easy to see how matter may 
change; it is changing before our eyes every moment of 
time, but not an atom of matter has ever been destroyed. 
As we cannot conceive any limit of space or time, so we 
cannot conceive of the annihilation of matter, or its non- 
existence. But spirit, in its very nature, is inherent and in- 
destructible; it is of the very nature of God, for ''God is a 
Spirit." 

SI 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Here is a worm, a repulsive thing, creeping in the dust; 
no one would care to touch it, since it is so loathsome a 
creature; it finds for itself some sheltered place, and, from 
a substance which exudes from its own body, spins for itself 
a cocoon, or silk-lined chrysalis, in which it spends the hours 
and days of winter. The child, or the unsophisticated will 
say: ''it is dead." But when the soft winds of spring blow, 
when the rays of the sun shine warm and bright, this chrysalis 
opens at one end, and forth comes, not a repulsive worm 
which we last saw, but a butterfly, or, it may be, the Creco- 
pian moth, with its brilliant wings, its superb beauty; he 
rests for several days upon his broken prison, his "outgrown 
shell," waving his beautiful wings in the warm breeze of the 
fresh spring days, and then flies away into a higher realm 
he ever knew, and flits from flower to flower, gathering 
their sweets, revelling in their beauty, — emblem of our own 
immortahty. Any child can see the analogies, and gather 
the lessons. We, too, now creep upon the earth; we are all 
groveUing materiaHsts; our feet are planted all too firmly in 
the soil of this world; but the night of death comes down 
upon us; the chrysalis holds us until the morning of the 
Resurrection, when we spread the wings of our immortality, 
and enter upon higher realms than any we ever knew before, 
and sip the sweets from the flowers that bloom in the Paradise 
of God. 

"O, listen, man, 

A voice within us speaks that startling word, 

Man, thou shalt never die; celestial voices 

Hymn it unto our souls; according harps, 

By angel fingers touched, when the mild stars 

Of morning sang together, sound forth still 

The song of our great immortality. 

Thick, clustering orbs, and this, our fair domain. 

The tall, dark mountains, and the deep-toned sea, 

52 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Join in this solemn, universal song. 

O, listen ye, our spirits, drink it in 

From all the air; 'tis in the gentle moonHght; 

'Tis floating mid Day's setting glories; Night, 

Wrapped in her sable robe, with silent step, 

Comes to our bed, and breathes it in our ears. 

Night and the Dawn, bright Day, and thoughtful Eve, 

All time, all bounds, the limitless expanse. 

As one vast, mystic instrument, are touched 

By an unseen, loving hand, and conscious chords 

Quiver with joy in this great jubilee; 

The dying hear it, and, as sounds of earth 

Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls 

To mingle in the heavenly harmony." 

The immortality of the soul may also be argued from the 
fact that all known changes of the body do not, in the least, 
diminish, or affect the consciousness of personal identity. 
The old theory was that every atom of the body is changed 
or renewed once every seven years, so that a person eighty 
years of age, must have had, at least, eleven different bodies, 
yet, during all these years he was conscious of being the same 
person; science now teaches that it does not require nearly so 
long for this complete bodily transformation, and by so 
much the argument for immortality is rendered still more 
probable. I have often seen wasting sickness reduce the 
body to a mere skeleton; I have seen other persons several 
of whose limbs had been amputated ; we know the marvels 
of modern surgery, — and yet the essential being remains 
intact; memory is retentive, reason fully and firmly seated 
upon her throne, the imagination kindHng to the brightest 
glow, and love intensified, — every power of the spirit at its 
highest and best. The argument is this : There is a strong 
presumption that the final change, which we call "death," 
and which, from the nature of the case, cannot be as great as 

S3 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

the antecedent changes have been, will have no power to ex- 
tinguish the spirit, since all the changes leading up to death 
have not, in the least degree, affected the life of the immortal 
spirit. In other words, if the body can die ten times without 
in the least affecting the life of the ego, the real personality, 
we may be sure that what we call "death", and which is no 
more, so far as the body is concerned, than any one of the 
ten deaths that have preceded, will not be able to take away, 
or even to weaken, in the slightest degree, the consciousness 
of our personal identity. 

A fourth argument may be founded upon the appre- 
hensions of the wicked. Why do the "wicked fear when no 
man pursueth?" What causes this fear and tremor when 
his secret is safe in his own bosom? 

"Whence this knocking? 

How is't with me when every noise appals me?" 

Suicides are all too common, but they would be much more 
so but for this conviction of immortality; mighty is its un- 
conscious influence over us all. Here, or later, somewhere, 
somehow, "Murder will out." "Be sure your sin will find 
you out." We may put Shakespeare side by side with the 
Bible, for the great delineator of human passions has well 
said : — 

"Who would bear the whips and scorns of time. 
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay. 
The insolence of office, and the spurns 
That patient merit of the unworthy takes, 
When he himself might his quietus make 
With a bare bodkin ? Who would fardels bear. 
To grunt and sweat under a weary life. 
But that the dread of something after death, — 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

The undiscovered country from whose bourne 
No traveler returns, — puzzles the will, 
And makes us rather bear the ills we have 
Than fly to those we know not of." 



It is the instinct of our immortality; an eternity-conscious- 
ness; we know it and feel it, though we may not be able to 
analyze it; it is a simple element, like oxygen, a primary 
truth that needs no demonstration. 

Another argument rests upon the character and condi- 
tion of all the powers of man ; they voicelessly but eloquent- 
ly proclaim their own immortality; they were made for 
unending progress ; other animals soon reach their limits ; the 
bird flies no more swiftly now than it did centuries ago; 
the dog has no more intelligence; no horse can be trained 
to trot a mile in a second; — all reach a limit of their powers, 
but man never does; there is no limit which he may not 
pass in his intellectual and spiritual accomplishments, no 
achievement, in any sphere which he may not eclipse. Be- 
sides, the majority of the race die in infancy or youth; the 
oldest have just begun to learn ; they have but mastered the 
alphabet of existence; the foundations of intellectual and spir- 
itual progress have been but laid ready for the vast super- 
structure. Do you lay the foundations of a building, care- 
fully planned with reference to the superstructure, but cease 
with the foundation? Do you destroy the canvas before 
the painting is placed upon it? The statue just as it is 
revealing its beauty from the block of marble? Do you 
pluck up your fruit-tree, carefully reared, just when its 
fa ir blooms are ripening into fruitage ? Neither does God, 
on a much larger scale, commit any of these supreme fol- 
lies. Men may and do destroy themselves, and turn the 
blessings of immortality into nameless curses, but God de- 
signs that we should live forever, and, after this life, in 

55 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

conditions far more favorable than the highest and best 
the most favored have ever experienced here. 

The argument of progress based on man's immortality, 
is one of limitless expansibility. His achievements that 
now everywhere crown this planet attest his powers: we need 
but endeavor to answer the question of the Psalmist: "What 
is man?" to see that "he was made a little lower than the 
angels," and that already he is "crowned with glory and 
honor." This argument is briefly elaborated in the chap- 
ters on the "Enjoyments," and the "Employments of 
Heaven," and need not be further dwelt upon here. 

We must, therefore, live forever; whether we will it or 
not; we cannot destroy ourselves, and God will never put 
out the candle of our being. Physical life is under our con- 
trol, but no dirk has ever been made keen enough, or long 
enough, and no poison sufficiently virulent, to reach the 
life of the soul. When cities shall be no more, when "the 
mountains shall melt with fervent heat," when empires 
and republics and earthly thrones shall cease, when suns 
and cycles shall have finished their course, when "stars 
themselves grow dim with age," you will live. Somewhere, 
beneath or above, or within the vortex of commotion, either 
singing the songs of the seraphs and of redeemed spirits, 
or, in bitterness, with hatred, malice and "everlasting con- 
tempt," cursing the day you were born, — you must live 
forever. 

It is a solemn, thrilling thought, the full realization of 
which would startle us like the cry of fire at midnight. 
Prepare, O, brother, friend, not to die, but to live forever. 
Disobey God, walk m your own perversity, and you must 
still live, but it will be such a life as you would gladly term- 
inate if it were in your power to do so. 

But now, while the golden door of Opportunity stands 
open, while Reason is on her throne; while Conscience 
startles; while angels beckon; while Christ entreats, do ye 

56 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

wash your spiritual robes in the Fountain of eternal Life. 
Put on Christ, obey His holy precepts, and you shall not 
simply have life — but glorious, thrilling, the "more abund- 
ant life;" life amidst the splendours of Heaven; you shall 
move amidst principalities and powers, and with "the souls 
of just men made perfect"; palaces and thrones will be your 
inheritance; your fellowship will be with the gigantic in- 
tellects, and the royal souls of all the ages; you will fly more 
swiftly than a sunbeam from star to luminous star, and 
revel with body, intellect and spirit amid the untold and un- 
explored splendours and mysteries of this universe, every 
part of which is crammed with thought, mystery, beauty, 
the wisdom and the glory of our God. 



57 



Immortality and Reason. 



Not in vain, O brother, hath Song the spurs of enterprise, 

Nor aimlessly panteth for adventure, waiting at the cave of mystery; 

Not in vain the cup of curiosity, sweet and richly spiced. 

Is ruby to the sight, and ambrosia to the taste, and redolent with all 

fragrance; 
Thou shalt drink, and deeply, filling the mind with marvels, 
Thou shalt watch no more, Ungering, disappointed of thy hope; 
Thou shalt roam where road is none, a traveller untrammelled, 
Speeding, at a wish, emancipate, where stars are suns. 

— Tupper. 



CHAPTER VI. 

IMMORTALITY AND REASON. 

Matter is indestructible; man's spirit is a unit; self is a 
unit. For the sake of studying spirit, we divide it into 
reason, memory, imagination, will, the passions, sensibil- 
ities, desires, but really, and subjectively, without any ref- 
erence to the functions performed, the spirit is a unit, and, 
therefore, not capable of division ; you think, therefore, you 
are; you are, therefore, you must be. You cannot even think 
yourself non-existent. The problem of doing so, is the 
problem of thinking of the bounds of space, or time; it is 
not possible to think of a place where there is no longer 
extent; or, of time past that was not preceded by time; 
nor, of time to come that shall not be followed by time 
ad infinitum. 

All the analogies which look like destruction are illusive, 
delusive; sugar may disappear in water, or silver in acid, 
but have they ceased to exist? All things may be reduced 
to their constituent elements, but, beyond that, there is no 
reduction; the atom is the bed-rock beyond which it is im- 
possible to advance in analysis; so, the human spirit is not 
further reducible; it is the bed-rock of all existence; heaven 
and earth, as such, may pass away, but the spirit must 
abide, the spirit of man, and the spirit of God who gave it. 

Thought, too, is an endless chain. We want to know; 
we must know; thirst for knowledge is insatiable; we have 
limitless capacity for knowledge. The more we know the 
more we may know, and the easier acquisition becomes. 
This is a marvellous psychological fact, and an irrefutable 
argument for immortality. Shall we be thrust away at the 
beginning of the feast? Shall we not somewhere, some- 
how, after we have so laboriously acquired the alphabet, 

6z 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

be permitted, and have the time, to read the literature of 
all existences? We cannot do more than master the al- 
phabet in the longest life here; we learn the mastery of only 
a few tools; it will require immortality to perfect ourselves 
in the use of these, and then to go on in the mastery of others, 
in constructive work, in research, in acquisition. 

Love, too, like knowledge, must have eternity for its ful- 
filment, or its perfection, its culmination. We theorize 
here about ''perfect love," and we expect to be made per- 
fect in this life in love; but such love is always limited by 
mundane conditions, and by human frailty. The more of 
this "perfect love" anyone possesses, the deeper will be 
his conviction that his adventurous bark has not yet sailed 
out into the midst of its boundless ocean. The attained 
must forever be simply a stepping-stone for the unattained. 
Every cry to God for purity, for perfection, for rest, for 
victory, is an argument for immortality. Love requires it. 

The obverse side of this truth is worth looking at for a 
moment. The love of God requires our immortality. The 
fond mother has her babe upon her bosom; she loves it, 
truly, but she loves it more, with a stronger and purer love 
as the years glide on. She needs more than the babyhood 
of her child to develop and perfect her love for that spirit. 
Love is a ladder; babyhood is at the bottom of that ladder; 
it will require all the years of this life, and more, too, to 
touch the ascending rungs of that ladder, the heights of 
which have never been scaled by man. 

Grant now, for a moment, some one has said, that death 
ends all, what sorrow does God inflict upon Himself by 
allowing the objects of His love to perish. Nay, what more 
than sorrow, what folly to train men to love, to lead them 
through years up to the point of mutual recognition and 
sympathy only to snuff them out of being. 

It is as though a father should rear children until their 
love for him bloomed into full sweetness, and then dig 

^2 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

graves into which he thrusts them while their hearts are 
springing to his, and his name is trembling upon lips that 
he smothers with eternal dust. 

It is related of an Arab chief, whose laws forbade the 
rearing of his female offspring, that the only tears he ever 
shed were when his daughter brushed the dust from his 
beard as he buried her in a living grave. But where are the 
tears of God as He thrusts back into eternal stillness the 
hands that are stretched out to Him in dying faith ? O, 
my dying Lord Jesus, Thine every tear-drop is full of im- 
mortality; Thy every wound proclaims it with an eloquence 
that causes the dead to come forth from their graves; Thy 
voice thrills thro' Heaven and earth proclaiming that death 
is no more. Thou art the very Prince of LIFE. 

If death ends all, then did Jesus Christ die for a worm. 
If death ends all, then is this world nothing but an ever- 
yawning grave in which, like the Arab chief, the loving God 
buries His children with hopeless sorrow, mocking at once, 
their hopes, faith, and love, and denying every attribute of 
His own nature ? The logic of the love of God is, that death 
does not end all. 

Immortality is required, too, to meet the ends of justice. 
This life is all too short for that mighty, discriminating work 
which God only can perform, and with Him, a thousand 
years are but as a day. This life is a fragmentary, 
unfinished piece of moral work. Wrongs must be redressed, 
virtue rewarded, God's glory made manifest, and all His 
ways justified in the sight of angels and men. "Here a 
Nero is crowned and a St. Paul beheaded; a Borgia receives 
the tiara and a Savonarola is burned at the stake; Augustus 
wears the royal purple, and a Christ is crucified." Wicked 
selfishness rolls in wealth and uncounted millions, and vir- 
tuous poverty has scarcely enough to preserve life; too often 
"might makes right," and it is not the "survival of the 
fittest,*' but of the basest, and, for the time (and, O, how 

63 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

long that time,) the strongest. I cannot believe that vice 
will finally triumph. Who believes that a Booth, a 
Guiteau, and a Czolgosz can take the lives of three such 
men as Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, and Wm. 
McKinley, and stop forever their development? If such 
men as the three I have named, and whom all execrate, 
could do that, then the universe would not be in the 
hands of a just God, but, rather, it would be in the hands 
of devils. Look, too, at the "Trust," the "System" of to- 
day ; the gigantic robberies, the millionaires and billionaires 
on the one hand, and the impoverished, the robbed, the 
paupers, on the other; look at the drunkards, the spend- 
thrifts, the parasites, and blood-suckers who rob their 
wives and children, torturing them by years of viciousness, 
and often taking their lives in deeds of violence, — is there 
but one destiny for all ? Then is God not upon the throne, 
neither is He a God of mercy, or of justice. Existence is, 
thus, a logical necessity "to justify the ways of God to 
man," and to give all an opportunity to work out their real 
destiny, as it now exists only in germinal form, undeveloped 
yet in each one's personality. 

As has already been suggested, if this life is all, then is 
man overfreighted morally and spiritually. There is also 
a disproportion between his sufferings, self-denial, crosses, 
on the one hand, and his emoluments, and rewards upon the 
other. Consider the freight of his being in his conscience, 
his mind, his love, and ambitions, his sensibilities and capac- 
ities, — these are too great for this life alone. You do not 
need a sledge-hammer, much less a trip-hammer if there is 
nothing larger or harder than hazel-nuts to crack. You 
do not need the Great Eastern, unless indeed, you have 
a cable that is to tie worlds together. The freight which 
man carries, implies, in its very nature and quantity, the 
port to which it is destined, and is prophetic of his immor- 
tality. 

64 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Men grovel in doubt and fear, and have only dim hopes 
because they are not separated from this world to which they 
allow themselves to be bound by a thousand cords. We 
are too much like Milton's tawny lion clawing to lift our 
hinder parts out of the mud. We are of "the earth earthy," 
and, therefore, not capable of receiving this doctrine of 
immortality and life. When the wires on the African 
continent become covered with spider webs, they refuse to 
carry the electric current, and messages become an impos- 
sibility; relays of men are sent out to clear the wires of these 
webs which convey the electric energy to the earth. Thus 
are men and women, by a thousand delicate filaments, 
held to this earth, and lose the consciousness of their im- 
mortality. Those, however, whose affections are set upon 
the things which are above, who, like Enoch, walk with 
God, no more doubt their immortality than they do their 
present existence. 

Man, shut in by the world, living in it, by it, and for it, 
like a caged bird that has never used its wings, thinks he 
has no wings, lives as though he had none. But, liberate 
your bird, open its cage some sunny day, push it out of the 
cage where it was bom, and where it has always lived, and 
it will fly, pantingly at first, from twig to twig; later, from 
tree to tree, and over the mountains and continents, con- 
fidently, strongly, at last. 

Bring the human soul into harmony with its God; let 
every thought be brought into subjection to Him; let pur- 
ity of heart and life be the chief aim ; let life be a life of self- 
denial, of service for others, of humility — such a person will 
always see God; he will walk in the God-consciousness as 
he does in the air he breathes; to prove immortality to him 
is to prove his own present, happy life. 

The "clawing of the lion," perchance, must go on, but 
the divine Sculptor is helping, chiselling, away at us, and 
will, until the lion shall stand erect at last, no longer a part 

6s 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

of the block from which he was cut, like the lion of Lucerne, 
but free with the least possible contact with this earth. 

To doubt immortality is to reverse instinct; it is to re- 
ject the loftiest verdict of reason; it is to deny the Word of 
God, as we shall see in the next chapter; it is to decide against 
a universal instinct and hope; it is to withhold from human- 
ity its loftiest inspiration; it is to wither all possibility of 
progress and achievement, and to blast the best hopes of 
mankind. 

No, no, rather is Immortality a radiant maiden that, 
with a magic wand, overarches all the cemeteries of this 
earth with never-fading rainbows, scatters flowers on every 
coffin-lid, plants fragrant evergreens on every grave, sings 
the cheering songs of faith in every sick-room, and survives 
the wrecks of all our earthly visions and dreams. 



66 



Immortality and the Bible. 



'Then they that feared the Lord spake often to one another; and 
the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was 
written before Him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought 
upon His name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in 
that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them as a man 
that spareth his own son that serveth him." 

"For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. For I am in a strait 
betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which 
is far better: nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for 
you." 



CHAPTER VII. 

IMMORTALITY AND THE BIBLE. 

The fact that immortality is taken for granted, in the 
Bible, as though it lay entirely beyond the necessity of dem- 
onstration, is one of the strongest arguments in its favor. 
Like the existence of God, it underlies, and is the very warp 
and woof, of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, and, 
therefore, needs no proof. It would be impossible to under- 
stand any of the great doctrines of the Bible, its most ma- 
jestic facts and deeds without first granting the truth for 
which we contend. In the earliest verses of the Bible, we 
are told that man was created in the image of God. He 
stands above angelic ranks; above cherubim and seraphim, 
and next to the throne of God in point of endowments, 
capacities and honor. 

Moses speaks of "the tree of life," and it is said of the 
patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that they are not 
dead, for God "is not the God of the dead, but of the living." 
The laws of Moses against necromancy also imply man's 
immortality. The wise man says: "Then shall the dust 
return to dust, and the spirit to God who gave it." **In 
His presence there is fulness of joy, and at His right hand, 
there are pleasures forevermore." "When my strength and 
my heart faileth, God will be the strength of my heart, and 
my portion forevermore." It is said, when one of the 
"fathers" dies, that he is "gathered to his people," or that 
"he sleeps." "David slept with his fathers." Not that 
death is a sleep, as some teach, but that sleep does for the 
body what death does for the spirit of man. Sleep renews 
the lamp of physical life; it refreshes, invigorates; sleep 
links one day to another. So, death leads us into day 
eternal; it links this day to a better, brighter and eternal 

69 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

day; death is not entombment, nor a half -suppressed ex- 
istence; the Bible teaches us that it is the gateway into life. 

It would be impossible to explain the sacrifices, especially 
the great Sacrifice, worship, the prophecies, the promises, 
the threatenings of the Old Testament, without conceding 
first the truth of immortality. Many of the truths of the 
Bible would be entirely meaningless, others would be par- 
tially so, and still others would be foolish but for the start- 
ling truth of man's endless being. It is indirect proof like 
this which is more satisfactory than the most solemn and 
oft-repeated asseveration. 

When Christ came, He found a great variety of theories 
among the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Stoics and Ep- 
icureans; but He said little concerning any of these theories. 
He, too, in all His teaching, took this doctrine for granted, 
and taught it, with few exceptions, by indirection rather than 
by sermon and philosophy. But all duties are, neverthe- 
less, based upon it: obedience, self-denial, prayer, His suf- 
ferings, and death — all receive their full significance and 
consistency only in the light of it. 

Christ believed and taught it. He was its most glorious 
revelation and full exponent, and its most unanswerable 
argument. In His humanity He cast Himself upon it with- 
out hesitation or reserve, and died with Paradise opening 
to receive His spirit; His last word upon the cross was based 
upon it, for He said to the expiring thief: "To-day shalt 
thou be with Me in Paradise." Death was no leap in the 
dark for Him, neither is it for any of His true disciples; 
it was not even a land of doubts and shadows, though an 
hour of indescribable anguish; but death, since His death 
and resurrection, is only a door leading into other man- 
sions of God's great house. 

Christ never made a mistake in any matter of conduct or 
ethics. You can safely rely upon a man who always tells 
you the truth. What shall we think of a man who will not 



70 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

believe the great Teacher? When the clearest eye that 
ever looked upon the things of this life, or pierced the 
heavens; when the keenest judgment that ever weighed 
moral issues, and fundamental principles; when the purest 
heart that ever throbbed with human sympathy and divine 
love; when the God-Man, by assumption and by direct and 
unequivocal statements, tells me that man is immortal, — 
what is my culpability, my pride, my presumption, if I dis- 
believe. What are the consequences of such unbelief ? 

The following are a few of the many citations that might 
be given, which directly, or by implication, teach the glori- 
ous truth: — 

"For we know that if our earthly house of this taber- 
nacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 

"And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able 
to kill the soul ; but, rather, fear Him who is able to destroy 
both soul and body in hell." 

"But now is made manifest by the appearing of our Sav- 
iour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath 
brought life and immortality to light in the Gospel." 

"In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were 
not so, I would have told you; I go to prepare a place for 
you: and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come 
again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there 
ye may be also." This whole chapter, balm for millions 
of breaking hearts, must have the illumination of immor- 
tality, or it is, comparatively, meaningless. 

Such chapters as the fifteenth of First Corinthians, such 
books as the book of Revelation; such scenes as the trans- 
figiuration, in which two worlds met; most of the parables, 
and many of Christ's miracles, — depend upon this doctrine 
for their ethical value, their real beauty, their didactic 
force, and the light which they shed upon the pathway 
of life. 



71 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Such phrases and words as "eternal life," "everlasting 
punishment," "Heaven," "HeU," "angels," "thrones," and 
many similar terms, are all radiant with this truth. Thus 
it is seen that immortality is not an aspiration of the devout, 
nor a guess of the wise, nor a dream of the poet, nor a con- 
clusion of the logician, nor a speculation of the philosopher, 
but that it is at the very center and soul of God's world, 
order, and revelation. 

Let us remember, too, that when Christ speaks of "eternal 
life," He means something more than mere future endless 
existence; He means the fulness and perfection of life. 
Life is not to be measured by the adding of days to days; 
that is the way to measure existence ; but never the measure 
of life; life is measured by deeds, by thoughts, by progress. 
Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and 
never performed a deed, or uttered a word, that was deemed 
worthy of record in the book which speaks of his birth and 
death; while Christ gave less than four years to His public 
ministry, but in that short time He filled the world with 
moral splendours, and has furnished the world of thought 
with sufficient seed-truth to occupy all succeeding genera- 
tions in their unfolding. Life is only worth living when it 
is "hid with Christ in God." It is then that we have not 
only the mental conviction, but also the experience of 
immortality. 

When we put our lives in harmony with the laws of God; 
when we begin to pray; to persist in prayer; when we put 
on the beautiful vestments of love, humility, self-denial, 
and service, — then, and not until then, do we begin to real- 
ize what life really is, that life which death can never touch. 

The vision of the "Holy Waters," as given in the forty- 
seventh chapter of Ezekiel, is only a picture of the swelling 
waters of eternal life; here we walk in them only ankle- 
deep, but all verdure and freshness and beauty are made 
by them even here in the moral and spiritual realm; but their 

72 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

depth, their real qualities we cannot know until we pass 
beyond the gates of this life. 

The mission of Christ was to lift men from the dry soil 
and barrenness of existence into this flowing stream of life. 
Christ Himself is the actual fact of immortality. "I am 
the Way, the Truth, and the Life.'' "No man cometh unto 
the Father but by Me." Nature hints it, as we have seen; 
Reason amounts almost to a mathematical demonstration 
of its truth, but Christ is its most glorious, and perfectly 
satisfactory exponent. 

In some of the cathedrals of Europe, on Christmas Eve, 
two small lights, typifying the divine and the human nature 
of Jesus, are gradually made to approach one another, until 
they meet and blend, forming one bright flame. Thus, in 
Christ, we have the blended lights of two worlds thrown 
upon human destiny. 

Immortality is not an attainment, but '^ eternal life" is. 
How may I attain an abidiag and a comforting sense of 
my immortality? Or, rather, how may I have life in Jesus 
Christ, and feel with the great apostle that the "life I now 
live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who 
loved me and gave Himself for me?" 

I have already answered that question, but once more: — 
By hmnility, by "repentance toward God and faith in the 
Lord Jesus Christ"; by self-denial, by unworldliness, by 
spiritual thought, by devout aspiration, by silent but con- 
stant, unwearying communion with God; by open confes- 
sion, by unconditional surrender to Jesus Christ. 



73 



Glimpses of God's Universe. 



"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament show . 
eth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto 
night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where 
their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, 
and their words to the end of the world. In them hath He set a 
tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his 
chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going 
forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends 
of it; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

GLIMPSES or god's UNIVERSE. 

Somewhere in this universe is "The City That Lieth 
Four-Square." No one can tell where it is. Some have 
thought that it would be on this re-juvenated earth; others, 
that it is in the center of the sun; others maintain that the 
earth will be destroyed by fire; that "heaven and earth 
shall pass away." 

Before we study the City described by St. John, let us in- 
voke the aid of the astronomers, look above and around 
us that we may learn something of the universe, of which 
this earth is such a microscopic part. Who can tell what 
God has made this universe for? Who can tell what its 
destuiy will be? Has He made it to destroy it? As far 
as we know it is yet in its pristine youth. May we not, 
in the eternities, be permitted to range it, to explore its 
wonders, and solve myriads of its mysteries? Such is my 
faith and thine. 

Before our promised excursion into the fair fields of as- 
tronomy, it is well for us to remember that what we see 
depends more upon what we are in character, education 
and culture than it does upon what may be in our environ- 
ments. Two persons, standing side by side, under the canopy 
of the same heavens, or, by the side of the same painting, may 
see, and do see entirely different pictures. To see what 
Moses saw from the heights of the mountain, something more 
is necessary than merely to stand, topographically, where 
he stood; the past always projects itself into the future: — 
"The joys we lose are but forecast, 

And we shall see them all once more, 
We look behind us for the Past, 
And lol 'tis all before." 



77 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

We must have had the personality of Moses, his experi- 
ence, his trials and burdens and victories, to see what he 
saw from the top of Pisgah and gazing into the Promised 
Land. Heaven will be an eternal revelation since our 
growth in knowledge, in wisdom, our development into the 
likeness of Cnrist, will be like adding lenses of higher powers 
to a microscope, or the making of greater and better ob- 
jectives for a telescope. 

It is often the case that some object or scene which, really, 
has in it every element of beauty and sublimity has little 
fascination for us at first view. Have you not felt this as 
you have stood under Niagara Falls, or under grand old 
El Capitan, or on Vesuvius for the first time? But, given 
time for observation, for study, for reflection, for the ex- 
pansion of the mind and the soul, — then have they laid hold 
upon you with a power and fascination that you could not, 
and had no desire to, shake off. Once, on Maui, in the 
Hawaiian Islands, I climbed to the rim of Haleakala, the 
mightiest extinct crater in the world. It was long before 
dawn when we reached the top, more than ten thousand feet 
above the level of the sea that dashed itself into foam at 
the base of the mountain. There we witnessed the coming 
of Phoebus Apollo, the god of Day, driving his chariot here 
200 miles per hour more rapidly than in the latitude of our 
own state; we saw the waning of the Morning Star in the 
fierce light of that Sun whose coming was heralded by a 
million flaming spear-points and shining darts that glis- 
tened in the horizon so as to dazzle and to blind our eyes, 
while the Southern Cross was paling, too, under the crescent 
moon, and both fading away into a milder, softer, but most 
alluring beauty. Culture, reverence, personal effort like 
that necessary in climbing a mountain, a pure soul, and an 
alert intellect, — these are the elements of true vision. 

It is not the eye that sees, but the spirit that looks through 
the eye. But there are some thmgs so essentially, so 

78 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

inherently majestic, or sublime, or vast, or beautiful, or aF 
these combined, that no culture is necessary, to have, at 
least, some sense of these qualities; the untutored savage 
may and does feel them. If he be a normal being at all 
he must cry out with admiration. Not all depends upon the 
subjective; there is much in that which is purely objective 
in the mere atomic arrangement, in color, form, vastness 
motion. 

But the highest and best effects are forever the result of 
a correspondence between the two, the material and the 
spiritual, a correspondence or coalescence of the spirit of 
the man with his environment; and here comes the thrill- 
ing thought that to all eternity I may be brought more and 
more into correspondence, into vital touch and sympathy 
with all the works of God, with His creatures, whether 
human or angelic, and also with the nature and being of 
God himself. 

I need scarcely remind the reader that, at this point, in 
the presence of God's universe, what I can write is only the 
smallest letter of the alphabet with which a description of 
the universe might be written. Let the reader study such 
an astronomy as Newcome's, or Warren's ''Recreations 
in Astronomy"; let him get a concept of the distances, 
volumes, motions, magnitudes, speed of Mercury, Venus, 
the Earth, the Sun; of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, with his rings 
and moons, of Uranus and Neptune, — the planetary system 
to which we all belong; then, with that as a foot rule, or 
scale, let him go out into space, and measure and weigh 
what he finds of the immeasurable and imponderable. 

Let us now endeavor to form some feeble concept of the 
vastness and sublimity of the universe where we dwell, and 
will live forevermore. If we were to take our stand upon 
the top of some tall church steeple, and survey the land- 
scape, and then remember that we would have to view 
900,000 similar landscapes to get an approximately correct 

79 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

idea of the size of the earth, we are thus impressed with 
the vastness of the globe that has a circumference of 25,000 
miles and a diameter of 8,000 miles. But if you were to 
place 500 earths like this side by side, Saturn's outermost 
ring would easily enclose them all. Or, if the sun were 
hollow, you could put into it, 300,000 planets like ours. 
If a human eye were capable every hour of looking upon a 
fresh measure of world material, 14,000 square kilometers 
large, that eye would need 55,000 years to overlook the 
surface of the sun. To reach the nearest fixed star, one 
must travel 33,000,000,000 kilometers, and if our speed of 
travel were equal to that of a cannon-ball, it would require 
five million years to reach our luminous destination. 

On a clear night an ordinary human eye can discover 
about 1,000 stars in the northern hemisphere, — most of 
which send their light from distances which we cannot 
measure. How large must they be! Round these 1,000 
stars circle fifty thousand other stars of various sizes. Be- 
sides single stars, we know of systems of stars moving round 
one another. Still we are but a short distance yet in space. 
Outside our limits of vision and imagination there are, no 
doubt, still larger spaces. 

The Milky Way holds, probably, at least 20,191,000 
stars; and, as each is a sun, we presume that sun is 
encircled by at least fifty planets. Counting up these figures, 
we arrive at the magnitude of 1,000,955,000 stars. A thou- 
sand million stars! Who can comprehend it? Still this 
is only a part of the universe. Modern telescopes have 
discovered more and similar Milky Ways still further off. 
We know of some 3,000 nebulae which represent Milky 
Ways like ours. Let us count 2,000 of them as being of 
the size of our Milky Way; then, 2,000 multiplied by 
20,191,000 equals 40,382,000,000 suns, or 2,019,100,000,000 
heavenly bodies. Suppose these bodies parading before 
our eyes, one per minute, it would require 3,940,000 years 

80 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

to finish the march, in all of which inconceivable time we 
would have to look upon them unceasingly. 

Now, suppose a human being migrating from globe to 
globe, and spending fifty years on each, he would require 
100,955,000,000,000 years for his round. If he staid only 
an hour, like modern globe-trotters, and who would be 
content with such a glimpse, he might save ( ?) much time 
but he would still need 230,400,000 years for the delightful 
tour, every moment of which would, of course, be brimful 
of interest and instruction. 

But these nebulae are only a part of the universe. Out- 
side the nebulae limits, we know of other nebulae not re- 
solvable into stars. They appear to be primitive nebulae, 
pure, unused world-stuff, matter for new creations. Some 
of them occupy a space as large as the orbit of Uranus. 
Others are still larger. The one in Orion is estimated to 
be 2,200,000,000,000,000,000 times larger than the Sun. 
Are we come to the uttermost limits ? Who dare affirm it ? 
Probably we have come to our own present limitations. 
But the future with its new and superior instruments and 
scientific devices, will push these present limits still further 
into space. 

Limits? Limits for space and time? Impossible. 
Then, who dare limit God who made both space and time 
and created the universe? Space and eternity are com- 
mensurate ideas, but God is greater than all. Wesley 
must have had the thought, when he sang: — 

**0 God, Thou bottomless abyss. 

Thee to perfection who can know ? 
O, height immense, what worlds suffice 

Thy countless attributes to show. 

Greatness unspeakable is Thine: 
Greatness, whose undiminished ray, 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

When short-lived worlds are lost, shall shine 
When earth and heaven have fled away." 

Neither can anyone fix limits for man's possibilities of 
growth in knowledge, in wisdom, in happiness, in capacity, 
in God-likeness. Do we not, in all this, have more than a 
hint as to how we shall spend eternity? 

Addison, with many other poets, expresses the same faith, 
when he sings: — 

"Through every period of my life 

Thy goodness I'll pursue: 
And, after death, in distant worlds, 

The pleasing theme renew. 

Through all eternity to Thee 

A grateful song I'll raise; 
But O, eternity's too short 

To utter all Thy praise." 

How charming is residence on this planet! What trav 
eler has seen it all ? Let your thought travel over it all, — 
what pleasure and instruction there would be in its full ex- 
ploitation! Make a few changes in the body of man, and 
how he could revel in the delights of existence and life here 
in this world. Now, expand the thought to the universe 
of God: behold what lies before the human spirit residing 
in a spiritual body, with immortality, and all eternity to 
range, explore and learn that which transcends the finite. 

Richter says that an angel once took a man and stripped 
him of his flesh, and lifted him up into space to show him 
the glory of the universe. When his flesh was taken away, 
the man ceased to be cowardly, and was ready to fly with 
the angel past galaxy after galaxy, and infinity after infinity. 
So man and angel passed on viewing the universe, until 
the sun was out of sight, until our solar system seemed like 

82 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

a speck of light against the black empyrean, and there was 
only darkness. And they looked onward, and in the in- 
finities of light before, a speck of light appeared, and, sud- 
denly, they were in the midst of rushing worlds. But they 
passed beyond that system, and beyond system after sys- 
tem, and infinity after infinity, until the human heart sank, 
and the man cried out: ''End is there none of the universe 
of God ?" The angel strengthened the man by words of 
counsel and courage, and they flew on again until the worlds 
left behind them were out of sight, and specks of light in 
advance were transformed as they approached them, into 
rushing systems; they moved over architraves of eternities, 
over pillars of immensities, over architecture of galaxies, 
unspeakable in dimensions and duration, and the human 
heart sank again, and cried out: "End is there none of the 
universe of God?" And all the stars echoed the question 
with amazement: "End is there none of the universe of 
God?" And this echo found no answer. They moved on 
again past immensities of immensities, and eternities of 
eternities, until in the dizziness of uncounted galaxies the 
human heart sank for the last time, and called out: "End 
is there none of the universe of God ?" And again all the 
stars repeated the question, and the angel answered: "End 
is there none of the universe of God?" "Lo, also, there is 
no beginninir!" 

This paragraph may be the poetry of astronomy, but it is, 
at the same time, in perfect harmony with the laws of 
thought; for it is impossible to conceive either the end or 
the beginning of space, or duration; and God, our God, 
is above and behind and beyond both space and duration, 
and has peopled space with the fair creatures of his own 
omnipotence. 

This poetry of astronomy is in harmony with fact and 
literalness, and why may it not be so with the chapters of 
Revelation which describe "The City that Lieth Four- 

83 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Square ?" And is it not, too, a plausible hypothesis that there 
are other Celestial Cities besides the one which John saw 
and described so elaborately ? Within the immensities and 
galaxies for spirits and immortal bodies beyond the powers 
of temperatures to affect, may there not be ''many man- 
sions," and homes, the habitat of the saints, for God is 
just as near to each and all as to anyone that can be named. 

I stood beneath the starry canopy; 

It was the midnight hour; there was no moon. 

But stars and planets, blazing nebulae, 

And all the constellations glowing on the face 

Of Night did shine and sparkle with such light, 

With such unwonted brilliancy as I, 

Enraptured, and with uplifted eyes, 

Had ne'er observed before. I cannot name 

Their varied lights of gold and fire, of blue, 

Of silver bright; the Milky Way, a path 

Of suns, each singing its Creator's praise; 

Each, too, the home, perchance of those 

Who loved and served their God with loyalty; 

The ''many mansions" these may be to draw 

Us with their radiant beauty to the skies: 

Who dare deny? A golden star our Home; 

The Pleaides a Paradise, (who can disprove ?) 

For many happy souls may it not be 

That yonder sparkling orbs the "mansions" are 

Which He, for all who to the end endure. 

Prepared in richness, splendours, magnitude. 

Beyond the highest thought of man ? 

How calm 
How true the Pole Star stands upon the brow 
Of ebon night, while all the myriad hosts 
Around it march, and sing the praise of God. 
How many argonauts and mariners 

84 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Have gazed upon its changeless face of hope, 
And gathered courage for the storms that howl 
Upon the seas. Columbus, with a faith 
Like Abraham's, went forth to find new worlds. 
Directed by its steady, central light; 
*And if no world had been amid the seas. 
Then had God said, and His creative power 
Had swiftly caused a world, or continent 
To spring to being, if for nothing else 
Than to reward the faith of him who sailed 
Atlantic's main, and found the fairest world. 
And fertile soil for Freedom's hardy vine. 

Thus hath God set His stars within the dome 

Of night, that we might see His love and power. 

And press to happy homes prepared for all 

His saints; they beckon us; they lure us on* 

Their light is not deceptive; still they tell 

Of happy worlds above the cares of life: 

*'Have faith in God." The light of Heaven streams down 

And glorifies the way on which erstwhile 

We often walked with halting, weary feet. 

Yes; yonder where I see the ruddy light, 

Is Mars, — there may thy kingdom be, and throne* 

Or, here where sweet Capella gives her light 

Your safe retreat and happy dwelling-place 

Through all the cycles of eternity. 

We may not know, we cannot surely tell. 

But in the imiverse's broad expanse. 

Ablaze with light reflected from the suns 

Invisible, with worlds on worlds untold, 

Both large and small, in clusters beauteous, 



* See Castelar's "Christopher Columbus.' 
8S 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Or diamond solitaires, or married orbs, 

He hath on these prepared for you and me 

Our future homes and heavenly residence. 

Sublime, divine, and shining with a light 

Ineffable, reflecting evermore 

The beauty and the wisdom of our God, 

Whose ways unsearchable transcend the thoughts 

Of man. 

Perhaps, yon shrinking nebulae 
Remote, unknown, unseen, may be my home. 
Though far too grand, too large, however small, 
For me, unworthy of His love and care; 
My home, at first, and, later on, as more 
Of God I learn, and as my thirsting soul 
Refines, and more of love receives, reflects, 
I may advance to fairer palaces 
And ampler space for every thought and deed: 
Promotion is the law of Heaven; advance, 
Enlarge, augment, approach the sun whose light 
lUumes the smallest orb that rolls in bliss 
On fair Creation's rim. 

Once more I look: 
And now I see a flying orb; it speeds 
Athwart the radiant spheres, and leaves a trail 
Of light, as if it were a messenger 
It speeds; as if in motion, action swift 
And true, it sought a higher bliss, surcease 
From loneliness; as if to fly, to shine. 
To smg, to cut through Erebus a path 
Of radiancy, were happiness replete. 

A flash, a glimpse, a hint, — ^no more 
Is given now, but many hints of Heaven 
God gives in many ways, and this dear night, 
Whose beauty marvellous so far transcends 

86 i 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

My feeble powers to tell, — declares 

In eloquence above all poets' words, 

That we shall shine, and stand, and fly from star 

To luminous star, from world to rolling worlds, 

And leave, where'er we go, a trail of joy, 

Of light unfading, as the smile of God. 

And we in groups of kindred spirits there 

Shall dwell, the constellations all declare; 

But, still, **a little while'* we may withdraw 

To be remote, alone with God; a star 

Our "closet" to become. 

And God hath said 
That every holy wish shall be fulfilled; 
"No tears," "no pain," but we shall live and love. 
And serve and praise, and have companionships 
As high as God, and sweet as bliss of Heaven. 



87 



Room in Heaven. 



'Tis God Who pours the living glow 

Of light, creation's fountain head: 
Forgive the praise, too mean and low, 

Or from the living or the dead. 
No tongue Thy peerless name hath spoken, 

No space can hold that awful Name; 
The aspiring spirit's v^dng is broken, — 

Thou wilt be, wert, and art the same. 
Language is dumb; — Imagination, 

Klnowledge, and Science, helpless fall; 
They are irreverent profanation. 

And Thou, O God, art all in all. 



None, none can trace Thy course sublime, 

For none can catch a ray from Thee, 
The Splendour and the Source of Time, 

The Eternal of Eternity. 

—Translation of John Bowring. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ROOM IN HEAVEN. 

*' After this, I beheld, and lo, a great multitude which 
no man could number, of all nations, and kindred, and 
people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before 
the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their 
hands, and cried with a loud voice, saying: — 'Salvation to 
our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the 
Lamb.' " 

This world is a crowded place. People are tramping 
upon each other's heels. Populations are becoming more 
and more congested. The trouble is not that there is not 
sufficient room, but that it is unequally divided. The cen- 
tralization of the masses, of wealth and of power is a strik- 
ing characteristic of the century upon which we have just 
entered. Under a single roof in some of our great cities 
more than 3,000 souls have their existence; some of our 
modem buildings reach an altitude of more than 300 feet, 
and are populous from cellar to dome. Many millions of 
earth are panting for lack of room! In Genoa, in Rome, 
in other Italian cities, you may see in very narrow streets 
the swarming masses who were born there, who live there, 
and from thence are carried to their beautiful Campo Santos 
under the blue Italian skies which, in all their lives, they 
rarely if ever saw, or only as from a deep and narrow tun- 
nel. Room, O give them room. Room| to wander by 
pellucid streams, to hear the songs of the happy birds, to 
gather fragrant flowers from the fair fields of nature and 
of God. This condition is still more sharply accentuated 
in the more populous Orient. 

The rich have no room for the poor, and often crowd them 
into the alleys, the stables, tenements and garrets. The 

91 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

poor often, by their own choice, lead lives that are narrow- 
ing and self-destructive. The rich must expand their own 
lives by helping the poor and the vicious, and these latter 
classes must, in some way, be taught that "godliness is 
profitable, having the promise of the life that now is, as 
well as of that which is to come." And this is still the 
greatest sociological problem of all the ages. 

How pathetic, too, is the thought that when Jesus came 
to this earth there was no room even for Him at the public 
hostelry; no door opened to receive Him. During His 
life-time, while the foxes had holes in which they could 
hide, and the birds nests where they could rear their young, 
"He had not where to lay His head." In His last days, 
life narrowed down around Him until, with broken heart, 
He breathed it out, in direst agonies, on the narrow con- 
fines of a Roman cross. No room for Jesus at His birth; 
no room for Him in life, and scarcely could a sepulchre 
be found for His dead body; no room now in myriads of 
human hearts where most He loves to dwell. 

Make room in your heart, dear reader. 
Your Saviour would enter to-day; 

Throw open your soul's firm portals, 
Make room for His entrance to-day. 

Every room in your being fling open, 
Not one must be left in the gloom: 

Wherever He enters is sunshine, 
For Him do thou haste to make room. 

A mansion is waiting, my brother. 
In love He prepared it for thee: 

Now thy heart be His palace forever, 
Thus thy life will be happy and free. 

92 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Let no cellar or garret exclude Him, 

No parlor or chamber deny 
The presence of Jesus, the Savior, 

Who, in mercy, again passeth by. 

if, however, certain changes, affecting our locomotion 
were made, then, there as here, there are almost infinite 
advantages in centralization, in the mingling of vast pop- 
ulations. Forevermore will there be large cities; they are 
required by human nature as we now know it; they are, 
too, it seems, a part of the divine plan. Hence, we are 
not surprised to find that there is, at Iseat, one great Capital. 
The term, ''Heaven", is generic, while "The City That 
Lieth Four-Square", is specific; there are, presumably, 
many other species of the same genus. This is the City 
that Jesus said He would go and prepare; a "City that 
hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." 
"The City of many mansions." All who will be so for- 
tunate as to achieve residence there, will find ample room, 
however crowded and hampered they may have been in 
their mortal lives; or, however vast their demesnes may 
have been on this planet. 

Before we follow the angel that measured the Celestial 
City with a "golden reed," let us observe that we shall not 
be able to see Heaven in a single day, nor in many centu- 
ries, as we have shown in the chapter on "Glimpses of 
God's Universe." How long will it take to explore the 
"Four-Square City?" How long would it take to see all 
that is worth seeing in "the greatest city in the world," 
with its environs? How long would you take interest in 
studying Rome, Paris, Milan, Vienna, Brussels, with their 
environs, art, history, galleries, palaces, museums, libraries, 
cathedrals, — and under competent guides and instructors ? 
Would a lifetime be sufficient? I trow not. How long 
would it take to examine exhaustively all the contents of the 

93 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

British Museum, the South Kensington, or our own 
Smithsonian Institute, — to know the history of each and 
every object, and all the ramifications of knowledge into 
which such studies would naturally lead ? 

But when we consider Heaven as taking in at least parts, 
if not all of the universe that lies beyond the "jasper walls," 
then we may inquire how long would it take to explore 
and exploit and fathom all the beauties, all the facts in their 
well-nigh infinite variety that lie hidden in such places as 
the Yosemite Valley, the Yellowstone Park, the Grand 
Canyon of the Colorado, and a thousand other places of 
similar, if not of equal interest, on this little planet ? This 
planet, is, indeed miniature, when compared with the other 
heavenly bodies which we already know, and the "largest 
city in this world," is miniature when compared with the 
vastness and the populousness of the City of which we write. 

It is said that "he that talked with me had a golden reed 
to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall 
thereof. And the city lieth four-square, and the length is 
as large as the breadth; and he measured the city twelve 
thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the 
height of it are equal." 

Twelve thousand furlongs equal fifteen hundred miles. 
The stories of its mansions and palaces may reach an al- 
titude of that number of miles, for the statement is specif- 
ically made that the length and the breadth and the height 
are all the same. And why not? There will be no more 
difficulty in utilizing the height than either of the other 
dimensions in that spiritual state of existence where our 
bodies will have the levity of that of our ascending Lord. 

The thought of such possible proximity to all that is best 
in the entire universe, thrills one with exquisite delight. 
How many and sad are the separations here ! How unavoid- 
able and tragic many of them are. Considerations of bus- 
iness, of health, of education, of usefulness and service are 

94 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

constantly rending families asunder, and leave them sad 
and broken. How glad are the few days of re-union, like 
Thanksgiving Day or Christmas! Heaven will be an eter- 
nal thanksgiving; it will be a perpetual Christmas, — a time 
of re-unions that will not be shadowed by the thought of 
approaching separations, many of them as sad as death itself. 
The "City of God" provides a mansion for each from the 
arrival of the first person from the Garden of Eden to the 
final closing of the "Gates of Pearl", if, indeed, these gates 
are ever closed. 

Let us now translate the work of the heavenly surveyor 
into the terms of human arithmetic: — 

When we reduce the twelve thousand furlongs, or fifteen 
hundred miles into feet, we find that we have 4,448,556,283,- 
000,000,000,000 cubic feet. That is, four and one-half 
septillion cubic feet. Let us now set aside f of this vast 
space for parks, courts, streets, public buildings, gardens, 
for the Throne and Courts of God; thus we will have to 
deal with only J, or, with 1,112,039,072,000,000,000,000 
cubic feet. Suppose we allow 4,000 cubic feet for a room; 
this space, could, of course, be divided into any desired 
shape; for example, it would make a room 20x20x10; 
or, one 15 x 15 x 14, with 850 cubic feet to spare. 

Let us now begin at the other side of our problem, and 
suppose that 500,000,000 people go to "The City that Lieth 
Four-Square" every year for 100,000 years; that is to say, 
a residence must be provided for fifty trillion (50,000,000,- 
000,000) people. This, of course, from a human standpoint, 
is a very liberal estimate, since the inhabited world is less 
than six thousand years old, and must have been sparsely 
settled for many centuries, and even now, has less than 
sixteen hundred millions population. It has recently been 
shown, by the highest statistical authorities, that this es- 
timate of the earth's population is far too great. 

When, then, it is proposed to prepare a sufficient number 

95 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

of rooms for fifty trillion people, we have in Revelation, 
a City large enough to meet this requirement more than 
five thousand fold, as we shall now see. 

Dividing the one-fourth space by the number of cubic 
feet we have allowed for one room, (4,000) we have 278,- 
034,768,000,000, the number of rooms at our disposal. 
Dividing this by fifty trillion, we have a quotient of 5,560, 
which equals the number of worlds like the above which 
could each send five hundred millions of souls for one hun- 
dred thousand years to the "Four-Square City." That is, 
to put it into one broad statement: 5,560 worlds could each 
send five hundred millions of souls for one hundred thou- 
sand years to the City of God, and, in one-fourth the space 
enclosed by the "jasper walls," each soul, man, woman, 
and child, could have a room of four thousand cubic feet. 
Or, if there were but one world, which is probably the case, 
then, according to the above computation, each could have 
a "mansion," with 5,560 rooms of the said size. 

Room! Room! "Enough for each, enough for all, 
enough forevermore." Yes; there is room. The ample 
provisions of this great City correspond with the equally 
ample provisions of grace. "Whosoever will may come and 
take of the waters of life freely." " God is not willing that 
any should perish, but that all should come unto Him, 
and be saved. It is no wonder that He stands, and calls: — 
"Look unto Me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved." 
Even the prophet, seven hundred years before Christ, 
knew that there was room both in the mercy of God, and 
in His Capital City: — "Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come 
ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, 
and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and 
without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that 
which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfieth 
not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which 
is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness." 

96 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

There is room for you, reader. Your space, your man- 
sion, is actually awaiting you Believe it. May you rise 
from the reading of this chapter, as I do from its writing, 
from the contemplation of these figures, more determined 
than ever, by the abundant and free grace of God, to oc- 
cupy your niche among the millions who shall gather in 
that most joyful, most populous, most vast, most cosmo- 
politan, most interesting, most diverting and advantageous, 
and most permanent city in all the universe of God, "The 
City That Lieth Four-Square." 

We have space to note only a few of the peculiarities of 
the City, which, at first, impress us as being very strange, 
and different from anything we now know of such places; 
for example, we read in Revelation, XXII., 4, "And there 
shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither 
light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light; and 
they shall reign forever and ever." 

A city without our sun, the resplendent luminary of our 
planetary system! A city without the sun of any system! 
"The Lord God giveth them light." How can it be? 
How shall we dispense with the light of our sun? What 
shall be the nature of the Hght that takes its place ? Observe, 
however, that a luminary is provided; that the City is not 
without light; in fact, "there shall be no night there," at all. 
The present astronomical arrangements shall, doubtless, 
be greatly modified, or there may be an entirely new order, 
"a new Heaven and a new earth," in which the Lord God 
Almighty shall be the only and all-sufficient luminary. 
How sweet will that light be! How soft, healing, and un- 
failing; never too much, never too little; in it we shall bask 
forever as we do now rarely in the light of the sun on some 
perfect spring day, or in the summer glory; but the days 
that are so rare now and here will be continuous there, 
and unbroken by any night. 

Doubtless, there will be many surprises even to the 

97 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

astronomer, the devout scientist, to the most intelligent 
saint, theologian and philosopher. Surprises! New orders! 
What may they not be ? It hath not entered into our minds 
to conceive even. Perhaps, new senses will be added to 
our faculties; the bee already, and the bird, have, as a 
sixth sense, that of location, else how could they ever find 
their home, or nest ? Vision may become both microscopic 
and telescopic. The new things of earth serve to prepare 
us for the surprises to come. The liquefaction of air, the 
discovery of the Roentgen ray, wireless telegraphy, the ap- 
plications of electricity to the conveyance of sound, — these 
are some of the marvels of recent years, and they are a proph- 
ecy of that which is to be in a higher and more refined and 
spiritual sense. 

We may be sure that, whatever the light, it will be in 
every way more satisfactory than the present way of light- 
ing this world. "There shall be no night." "Neither rest 
nor sleep will be necessary;" what we sing of "tireless pin- 
ions," may be something more than a poetic conception. 
It gives one profound joy to think of an unbroken, an un- 
interrupted existence and life; here, one-half of our time 
must be given to sleep and rest. What tired, sleepy, lan- 
guid, mortals we are! A person of seventy-five years has 
slept at least twenty-five of them, and, coimting the periods 
of infancy, childhood, and old age, it is safe to say that such 
a person has slept at least thirty years of his precious time. 
What a waste is this! Who that enjoys his being, who that 
really lives, would not wish to have this otherwise? And, 
hampered as we are, too, with disease and untoward 
climactic conditions, many of our waking hours are little 
better than a half-suppressed existence; often tired, sleepy, 
physically miserable. "In this we groan earnestly desiring 
to^be clothed upon with our house from heaven." 

Another peculiarity of this City is that there shall be no 
temple there. "And I saw no temple therein; for the Lord 

98 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it." How 
strange would a city appear to us without any church, or 
temple. And this, the greatest, the most eminently pious 
City in all God's worlds, every one of whose inhabitants is 
a saint, has no temple of any kind, or denomination. But 
hold; there is a temple, exceeding anything that man has 
ever dreamed of; in comparison to which the Taj Mahal, 
or St. Peter's, at Rome, are the veriest toys: "The Lord 
God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it." O, 
to see that temple not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens! 

Churches, synagogues, temples, as we know them, shall 
not be needed there. What are their functions here ? What 
are the purposes they serve? They are largely places of 
sorrow, of mourning, of struggles, of sighs and tears. To 
them we carry our dead, and from them, in the saddest 
fimeral corteges, with emblems of gloom and sorrow, we 
march to the cities of the dead. At their altars, in solemn 
marriage rites, we unite the lives of those who would build 
homes here; or, we baptize infants and adults if they prom- 
ise to lead holy lives. They are places for strong interces- 
sions and prayers and struggles; where men and women 
come to "mourners' benches," "penitent forms," or "in- 
quiry rooms" ; the places where the saints gather with drunk- 
ards and harlots, the licentious and the vile, the discour- 
aged and outcasts, — fallen men and women, that they may 
be pointed to the "Lamb of God that taketh away the sin 
of the world," that they may wash in "the fountain for 
sin and im cleanness." When our churches, and the saints 
in them no longer do these works, then there is no longer 
any reason why they should exist even here. But not one 
of these functions can they perform in that land, or City 
where there are no tears, no temptations, no "marrying 
or giving in marriage," where there are no fallen, or evil, 
or drunkards or harlots, no "penitent forms," — ^no need of 

^'''' 99 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

churches there; the bivouacs, as they are here, of the tem- 
perance forces to fight the monster crime of all the ages. 

Yet, Heaven has its temple. We shall there be more 
worshipful, more grateful, than here at our best estate; 
our hearts must ahnost burst with gratitude and rapture, 
and we shall surely join in the glorious company of apos- 
tles and martyrs and saints of all the ages in singing the 
*'Hosannas" and "Halleluiahs" of our hearts, the song 
of "Moses and the Lamb." 



lOO 



The Beauty of Heaven. 



O, how beautiful that region, 
And how fair that heavenly legion, 

Where thus men and angels blend! 
Glorious will that City be, 
Ftdl of deep tranquility. 

Light and peace from end to end. 
All the happy dwellers there 

Shine in robes of purity, 

Keep the laws of charity, 

Bound in firmest unity. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE BEAUTY OF HEAVEN. 

I HAVE already admitted that no one, inspired or unin- 
spired, can describe the beauty of Heaven, and anyone 
who attempts to do so, attempts the impossible. Some 
parts, however, of the Celestial City are fully described, 
as, for example, the walls that surround it. They are com- 
monly spoken of as *'the jasper walls." In the seventeenth 
verse of the twenty-first chapter of Revelation, it is said of 
the angel surveyor who conversed with John, that ''he 
measured the wall thereof an hundred and forty and four 
cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the 
angel." "And the building of the wall of it was of jasper; 
and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass." 

And the foundations of the walls of the City were gar- 
nished with all manner of precious stones. "The first 
foimdation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a 
chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; 
the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; 
the ninth, a topaz; the tenth chrysoprasus; the eleventh 
a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst. And the twelve gates 
were twelve pearls; every several gate was one pearl; and 
the street of the City was pure gold, as it were transparent 
glass." 

Stuart says of these precious stones that there is a classi- 
fication in their arrangement, a mixture not dissimilar to 
the rainbow, with the exception that it is more complex. 
Let us look at this foundation in the light of the knowledge 
we have of the gems that enter into its foundations. 

Jasper is a beautiful bright green stone, sometimes clouded 
with white and spotted with red and yellow. 

103 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Sapphire is of a beautiful azure, or sky-blue color, 
almost as transparent and glittering as a diamond. 

Chalcedony is the name of a gem generally of a whitish, 
bluish, or smoky-green color, susceptible of a high and lovely 
pohsh. Some Greek manuscripts read "carbuncle," in- 
stead of "chalcedony." Carbuncle is "a very elegant gem 
of a deep red color with an admixture of scarlet. From its 
bright, lively color it had the name of ' carbunculus,' 
which signifies a little coal, because, when held up to the 
sun, it appears like a bright, burning coal." 

Emerald is one of the most beautiful of all the gems, 
and has a bright green color, without any admixture. 

Sardonyx is a precious stone exhibiting a milk-white 
variety of the chalcedony, intermingled with shades or stripes 
of sardian, or cornelian, (flesh-color.) 

Sardius "is a precious stone of blood-red, and, sometimes 
of flesh-color." 

Chrysolite is of a beautiful yellow color, and was so called 
by the ancients from its looking like a golden stone. 

Beryl is of a bluish green, and is very brilliant. 

Chrysoprasus is apple-green, and often extremely beau- 
tiful. 

Jacinth is a precious stone of deep red with a mixture 
of yellow. It is the same as the hyacinet, or cinnamon 
stone. 

Amethyst is a pure rock-crystal of a purplish violet color, 
and of great brilliancy. 

These gems form the foundation of the walls of the City. 
The wall itself is a bright green, mingled with red and yel- 
low. In addition to this, it is transparent, so that it will 
admit the rays of the different colors to pass through it, 
which emanate from the stones that form the foundation, 
for many of these stones emit light of themselves. 

This radiant, glorious wall, blazing with an almost in- 
finite variety of colors and beauty, with ever-varying, 

104 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

kaleidoscopic effects and whose twelve gates are each one 
solid pearl, is 264 feet in height. The gates seem to have 
no other purpose than to break the walls, and to add grace 
and beauty to them, for they are never shut, and they beau- 
tifully typify God's grace and mercy which are open day 
and night, and to all points of the compass and forevermore. 

Hast thou already entered them by way of "the fountain 
opened for sin and uncleanness in the house of king 
David?" Hast thou? If not, then enter there first, and 
quickly, or thou mayest never even see the Gates of Pearl. 

''And the Spirit and the Bride say. Come. And let him 
that heareth, say, come. And let him that is athirst come; 
and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." 

When w^e remember who is the architect and builder of 
''The City That Lieth Four-Square," when we remember 
that He is the same who makes every brilliant summer's 
day, or the canopy of a luminous night; that it is He who 
made the beauties and sublimities and grandeurs of the 
Alps, of the Yosemite, the Yellowstone, the Niagaras, the 
Canyons, the Multnomahs and Staubbachs of this world, — 
then we know that every expectation and vision, every fond 
anticipation will be transcended and eclipsed by the beau- 
ties and glories of the Celestial City, by the "many man- 
sions." 

How often have we marvelled at the creations of man in 
painting, or sculpture, or tapestry, or architecture. Who 
would have the hardihood, the presumption to attempt a 
description of the "Marble Miracle" at Milano? A cathe- 
dral of 2,500 statues upon its exterior, and the third largest 
sacred edifice in the world? Or, who would dare to dip 
his brush into suitable colors and attempt to paint either of 
the world's great St. Pauls, the one in London, and the 
other outside the walls of Rome ? Who, in the latter, could 
paint its eighty mighty Corinthian columns, forty on each 
side, forming the nave, and reflecting themselves in the 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

polished marbles of the floor; or, its altar canopy supported 
by four pillars of Oriental alabaster, the gift of Mehemet 
Ali, Pasha of Egypt? Or, the Grand Triumphal Arch 
which separates the nave from the transept? Or, its mo- 
saic medallions of the popes from Peter down to the pres- 
ent incumbent of the pontifical chair ? Or, its lovely court 
of the thirteenth century ? 

''Imperial splendour all the roof adorns. 

Whose walls a monarch built to God, and graced 

With golden pomp 

With gold the beams he covered, that within 
The light might emulate the beams of Morn; 
Beneath the glittering ceiling pillars stand 
Of Parian stone, in glorious ranks disposed." 

But this St. Paul's, like the other, is altogether the crea- 
tion of man, from turret to foundation stone; it is the work 
of human architects and builders. And, if no language 
can do it justice, then we need not attempt the Prince Albert 
Memorial Chapel, in London, nor the Taj Mahal, of India, 
or the glories of that other cathedral concerning which some 
poet sang: — 

"O, thou of temples old, or altars new, 
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee, — 

Worthiest of God, the holy and the true; 

Since Zion's desolation when that He 

Forsook his former city, what could be, 

Of earthly structures, in His honor piled. 

Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty, 

Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, — all are aisled 

In this eternal Ark of Worship undefiled." 

io6 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

But St. Peter's was the work of Bramante, Raphael, 
Michael Angelo, Vignola, Carlo Maderno, and of Bernini, 
who gave it the finishing touches of ornamentation, and built 
the enclosing colonnade. So, here, too, all is human. If, 
however, the creatures of God, can give us such works; if 
they can build us such cathedrals as St. Peter's; if they 
can carve us such statues as Canova's '^ Christ," or Michael 
Angelo Buonarotti's "Moses," or paint us such a picture as 
Raphael's "Transfiguration," or his Dresden "Madonna," 
or create and work out in marble such a miracle in stone 
as the Milan Cathedral, or the twin-spired temple at 
Cologne, or the mosaic-covered San Marco, of Venice, — 
what may we not expect from Him who is the Creator of 
the constellations, of the sun and moon, and of all the 
luminaries of the day and night, and of the whole bound- 
less and resplendent universe? 

The painters and architects, and all the workers of this 
world are such, and become the creators of these less-master- 
ful achievements because they have a "spark of divinity" 
in their own bosoms. Love of God, likeness to Him, love 
of liberty, and of the race, have been the most pregnant 
forces in the building up of art, and of great and enduring 
cities. Was not Shelley right, when he sang: — 

''Like unfolded beneath the sea, 
Like man's thought dark in the infant's brain. 
Like aught that is which wraps what is to be. 
Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein 
Of Parian stone; and yet a speechless child 
Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain 
Her lidless eyes for thee; when o'er the Aegean main 
Athens arose; a city such as vision 
Builds from the purple crags and silver towers 
Of battlemented clouds, as in derision 
Of kingliest masonry; the ocean floors 

107 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Pave it, the evening sky pavilions it; , 

Its portals are inhabited 

By thunder-zoned winds, each head 

Within its cloudy wings by sun-fire garlanded 

A divine work. Athens diviner yet, 

Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will 

Of man, as on a mount of diamond set; 

For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill 

Peopled with forms that mock the eternal dead 

In marble immortality." 

If the gifted Shelley cannot do justice to a city like 
Athens, with its Parthenon and Erectheum, and when he 
must attribute its beauty to ''a divine work," then we can 
never know, until we see for ourselves, the beauty of the 
Celestial City, that City "whose builder and maker is God," 
and have our residence in it for many ecstatic centuries. 

But, still, indulgent reader, let us linger longer over this 
delightful task, invoking still the aid of the Muses, but more 
of the Word itself, and that illumination and enthusiasm, 
(en Theos) which is given to everyone who seeks it humbly 
at His feet. 

When a child, I used to sing these simple lines which, 
with their repetitiousness, have abided in memory, but 
whose authorship I do not know: — 

"Beautiful Zion built above. 
Beautiful City that I love, 
Beautiful gates of pearly white. 
Beautiful Temple, God its light. 

Beautiful trees forever there. 
Beautiful fruits they always bear, 
Beautiful rivers gliding by. 
Beautiful fountains never dry. 

io8 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Beautiful light without the sun, 
Beautiful days revolving on, 
Beautiful worlds on worlds untold. 
Beautiful streets of shining gold. 

Beautiful Heaven where all is light, 
Beautiful angels clothed in white, 
Beautiful songs that never tire, 
Beautiful harps through all the choir. 

Beautiful crowns on every brow, 
Beautiful palms the conquering show. 
Beautiful robes the ransomed wear, 
Beautiful all who enter there. 

Beautiful Throne for God the Lamb, 
Beautiful seat at God's right hand. 
Beautiful rest, all wanderings cease, — 
Beautiful Home of perfect peace. 

What a vision of beauty the enraptured revelator had 
when he wrote: — 

"And He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear 
as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God, and of 
the Lamb." 

"In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of 
the river, was there the tree of life, which bear twelve man- 
ner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the 
leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." 

"And there shall be no more curse; but the throne of 
God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall 
serve Him." 

"And they shall see His face; and His name shall be in 
their foreheads." 

"And there shall be no night there; and they need no 
candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth 
them light; and they shall reign forever and ever." 

109 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

But there is a still higher order of beauty. What we have 
thus far written is mostly external; it pertains to walls and 
streets, rivers and trees and palms; it is objective and ma- 
terial beauty, but is not, for that reason, to be despised. 
But the highest beauty is always spiritual; it is the outshin- 
ing of truth. 

The more numerous the elements of beauty, the greater 
the possible permutations and combinations, and, there- 
fore, the greater the variety of beauty for the delight of the 
aesthetic nature, and the souls of devout men. It is for this 
reason that we never tire of the firmament. What com- 
binations of stars! What constellations! What resplend- 
ent luminaries like Sirius, Venus, Mars, Jupiter! What 
variety of colors! The red of Mars, the blue of Capella, 
the green of Algol, the white and yellow lights with their 
combinations; what circles and semi-circles, what coronas, 
what forms and comets ! What lyres and swans and chairs 
and harps and animals, with gods and demi-gods! Ah, 
the ancients were not only astronomers, but they were poets 
as well. What familiar lights and faces greet the astron- 
omer, and follow him, like old friends, though he may 
wander to the antipodes, while new friends greet him at 
every step. This, too, will be a principle of beauty in 
Heaven. The great luminaries are the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost, — the Fountain of all beauty and truth. 
He is forever the God of the Beautiful, the Good and the 
True. Angels, seraphim, cherubim, men, women, and 
children, all tribes, all peoples and kindreds, from the Gar- 
den of Eden to the end of time, will be represented there. 
Think, too, of the diversities of time, of languages and 
nationalities and denominations from the beginning to the 
last person that shall enter the Celestial City. The reader 
will find this thought expanded in the chapter on ''the Per- 
sonalities of Heaven." 



no 



The Richest City. 



Far, far away, like bells at evening pealing, 
The voice of Jesus sounds o'er land and sea; 

And laden souls by thousands meekly stealing. 
Kind Shepherd, turn their weary steps to Thee. 

Angels of Jesus, angels of light, 

Singing to welcome the pilgrims of the night. 

Rest comes at length, though life be long and dreary, 
The day must dawn, the darksome night be past; 

Faith's journey ends in welcome to the weary. 
And Heaven, the heart's true Home, will come at last. 

Angels of Jesus, angels of hght. 

Singing to welcome the pilgrims of the night. 

— Faher. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE RICHEST CITY. 

"And the na.tions of them that are saved shall walk in 
the light of it; and the kings of the earth do bring their glory 
and honor into it." 

"And they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations 
into it." 

The riches of this great City are simply inconceivable 
and indescribable like everything else that pertains to it. 
If the walls of the city and its luminous foundations are such 
as we know them to be; if the streets are all pure, trans- 
lucent gold, clear as crystal; if there are great "white 
thrones;" if there are "rivers of life;" if there are "harps of 
gold," and "trees of life," and "crowns," and "palms of 
victory," — if all that is worthiest and best on earth has been 
taken there and preserved ; and if the creative and construc- 
tive genius of man shall still be exercised, and thus be more 
and more developed, and who can prove that it is not so, — 
then what may we not expect ? All presumptive arguments, 
aside from much clear and distinctive revelation, declare 
that these things are so. We have, then, in all this, at least, 
a hint, or intimation of the incomparable and undreamt- 
of riches of "The City That Lieth Four-Square." 

Some of my readers have spent many days in the Vat- 
ican, and also in the British Museum, and in such art 
galleries as the Louvre, the Dresden, the National, the 
Metropolitan, and in the cathedrals of Europe, and in other 
treasure-houses of this world. Anyone who has ever vis- 
ited these cathedrals, galleries, museums, and palaces, and 
has even glanced at their catalogues, has been convinced 
at once that a life-time of study would be necessary to ex- 
amine all their multitudinous and interesting treasures, 

IT3 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

and the earnest wish has always come that this might be 
possible. But here, life is too short for such diversion and 
study. 

There is another class of treasures entirely different 
from those found in cathedral, gallery, or museum, — I 
mean the libraries of the world. What is to become of all 
these treasures, and the divine talent and genius which 
have produced them? Who that is normal would not 
wish to spend a million years in thinking the best thoughts 
of the best men and women that have ever lived? Truth 
never gets old; it has perennial freshness and interest; it 
is forever worthy of preservation, however we may be con- 
fronted by the unexplored and the new. The genius of 
man is simply godlike, for man was created in the image 
of God; but it takes many generations for even godlike tal- 
ent or genius to reach its best; there is no real maturity; 
never a point beyond which it is not possible to advance. 
The inventions and discoveries of men, and the perfecting 
of these inventions, have required many years; will it not 
always be so ? No Minerva ever yet leaped fully equipped 
from the mighty head of some Jupiter, nor ever will. Many 
generations have passed before electricity was ever known, 
though Adam might have discovered it in the garden of 
Eden; many more passed, after its discovery, before it had 
any practical utility; years lie between Franklin and Morse; 
between them and Edison and Bell and Marconi. Just now, 
in the infancy of this century, we know only the alphabet 
of this marvellous force of nature. 

So on man's spiritual side, he must have time, and both 
the environment and the subjective state of Heaven will 
be most eminently conducive to his reaching his best, — 
his best, but with the unattained and the unattainable 
heights still towering above him. Returning to our thought 
of the world's libraries, and the talent that has produced 
them: shall all the thoughts of all the best men and women 



114 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

that have ever lived, be destroyed, or lost for lack of preser- 
vation in some form? And what of the immortality of 
that genius which could go on forever producing still better 
fruitage ? Shall not both and all survive the wreck of this 
world, if it ever be Mnrecked ? Personally, I believe that all 
will survive, and that the trees of the human personality 
will yield sweeter blossoms, and riper fruits as the cycles 
of eternity roll on. As to the preservation of thought, 
it may not be in the form of books by "the art preservative 
of art;" but, rather, on rolls, to be discoursed to us as is 
music from the best modern phonographs; so that reading 
will be a delight instead of tedious work, "a weariness of 
the flesh," as now. 

Thus, in some form all that is fit will survive, for our 
profit and delectation. But Heaven alone can reveal and 
declare the ''fit." There are no infallible standards here. 
Neither Darwin, nor Huxley, nor any other evolutionist can 
tell us what is "fit," or the "fittest." Will there, then, be 
libraries in Heaven? Will there be galleries of paintings, 
and sculptures, and museums, (musea) like those of Rome 
and London? Yes, surely; only, of course, larger, fuller, 
broader, confined to no ecclesiasticism,or school, and so class- 
ified, and, as already hinted, in such forms, that their study 
will be possible to all, a thrilling delight, a pleasure forever- 
more. Perhaps, one of the employments of Heaven will 
be the arranging of this earthly material, and its transfer- 
ence to these new forms, so that " he that runneth may read." 
So, too, the genius that produced it all shall continue, 
doubtless, to perform its creative functions, its constructive 
work, and still find its chief delight, and occupy large por- 
tions of time, in the production of similar but higher and 
worthier works. 

May there not be found there much that we have had a 
most earnest desire to investigate here, or with which we 
have been somewhat familiar, relics of this mode of our 

115 



THEiCITY THAT LIETH FOUR SQUARE. 

existence, if tor no other reason than the gratification of 
such a desire, and also to show us the foUies and puerihties 
and vanities of this Hfe, and its utter inferiority to the Hfe 
upon which we shall then have entered, and in which we 
shall revel with the most unspeakable and unfailing delights ? 

There is much that is good and worthy in this world 
which will, in some form, be preserved and stored in the 
Celestial City for our study, entertainment and enlight- 
enment. A visit to the cemetery is not without its value 
here, why should it be there? What are these "treasures 
of kings and nations" of the earth, concerning which it is 
said that they shall be brought into the City? Is there 
anything better, outside of the sanctified and glorified per- 
sonalities of men and women and children, than the works 
of their hands, and the creations of their brains? What 
constitutes the "glory" and "honor" of kings? True, it 
is their manhood, their characters, their reverence and wor- 
ship of the King of all kings — nothing can compare in value 
to righteous, holy manhood, or womanhood. But, next 
to that, is their genius, the peculiar and distinguishing 
power which man has, above all other beings, to achieve 
to originate, develop, and perfect that which springs from 
the fountain of his own being. Queen Victoria has gone 
into the Presence with her sweet and royal personality; 
shall she not occupy one of the "thrones" which are among 
the gifts to be distributed to God's children there? Most 
eminently is she fitted to serve Him in that capacity even as 
she did here for more than sixty years, for she is, every inch, 
and forever a Queen. 

What shall Raphael do with his genius, cut off, as he 
was, when but fairly started on his marvellous career, for 
he died at 37. What shall Michael Angelo, in the matur- 
ity of his powers, as we count maturity here, but still going 
to the Colosseum every day, when blind, too, and compelled 
to feel his way, and saying, when asked by Cardinal Farnese, 

116 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

what he was doing there, "I come here to school that I 
may learn." Shall that inextinguishable thirst for self- 
advancement find no field, no normal correspondence in 
environment and opportunity? An unquenchable fire 
burned in his very bones; he was humble, too, like all the 
truly great, for his best ideals were still far above in the 
empyrean to which, even with his long and best endeavor, 
he could not attain, but for which he never ceased to strive. 
Did he not take that characteristic with him into the future 
world whither he has gone? He surely did; it was an in- 
tegral part of his personality; without it, he would no lonsjer 
be Michael Angelo Buonarotti. 

''I wonder if ever a thought was sung, 

But the singer's heart sung sweeter ? : 

I wonder if ever a hymn was sung. 

But the thought surpassed the meter? 
I wonder if ever a sculptor wrought 
Till the cold stone echoed his ardent thought? 
Or, if ever a painter, with light and shade. 
The dreams of his inmost heart portrayed ? 

Will there not be still other seas to sail for men of sub- 
lime faith, or rare genius for discovery, like Christopher 
Columbus? Shall not Era Angelica still delight to paint 
angels, and his heavenly visions, and still go to his easel, 
as a minister to his pulpit, from his knees? And this the 
more, because, under the new conditions, he will have 
models, time, — all necessary conditions, as never before? 
May not a Bernini, or a Christopher Wren, still find an 
abundance of constructive work to do, and project and 
construct buildings, under special commissions of God, 
buildings that all Heaven shall admire, and that may be 
found on many of God's worlds ? Will a Mozart, a Beetho- 
ven, a Handel, a Florence Nightingale, cease to sing 

117 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

and play, and write oratorios for the choirs of Heaven, 
and others, to sing? 

The logical answer to all these questions, and a thou- 
sand similar ones, is that there will be conservatories of 
music, with every manner of musical instruments; that 
there will be great libraries, musea, treasure-houses, 
and a thousand other external and material forms, the fruits 
of genius and industry, of which we do not now even dream. 
Not simply treasure-palaces, but schools for the further 
development of every power of our triune nature. All these 
will be as much better there, as much more extensive and 
comprehensive, and perfect in adaptation, as opportunity 
and riches and purity, and nearness to the glorious origin 
of all life and perfection and genius, are better than in our 
curtailed and narrow, hampered present life. 

My idealistic reader may protest against such literal in- 
terpretations of the sacred book, but if this is not the 
rational method, and the spiritual, at the same time, then it 
must follow that we shall not be the same there as here; 
that poet and painter and architect, philosopher, ruler, 
traveler, and trader, must all lose their distinguishing char- 
acteristics, and be entirely different from what God made 
them. What, then, becomes of the persistency of species? 
In that case, one might as well cease to be at all. 

The chief treasures of Heaven will be the immortality 
of personal identity, the eternity of our distinguishing char- 
acteristics, the consciousness of personal identity reaching 
back to the beginning of our conscious existence, the op- 
portunity to work in harmony with said characteristics, 
their perfect purity and simpKcity, and the facilities for their 
improvement and guidance under the leadership, the great- 
est and best in all God's universe, — all under His final 
guidance who has always desired to be our friend, our 
helper, and who is, to-day, the greatest inspirer of the 
race. 

ii8 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

But here again, as in other matters, the chief treasures 
of Heaven pertain to it as a state rather than as a place. 
They are spiritual rather than material ^ but they will be 
quite as inseparable there as here. We shall see more of 
the ** riches of Heaven," in the chapters on the "Employ- 
ments," and the ''Enjoyments," of Heaven. Let us here, 
however, make a limited and imperfect catalogue of these 
treasures, or riches. Before doing so, permit me to say, 
by way of parenthesis, that every reader is a part of the 
book he reads, just as every book becomes a part of its 
reader. The reader must furnish the sensitized plate in 
the camera of his mind, while the author furnishes the 
pictures, adjusts the focus, arranges the lights, sky-lights, 
and side-lights. And if, by meditation, the reader "fixes" 
the impressions on the sensitive film of memory, so much 
the better, for he has thus gained not only a mental acqui- 
sition, but a mental habit of inestimable value. 

Many of the riches of Heaven are already in our posses- 
sion, but they are known so imperfectly, they are often 
so encased in the soil of this world that we shall scarcely 
recognize them when we shall see them in their glory and 
perfection in the light of our new and heavenly life; they 
are love, truth, gratitude, praise, thanksgiving, peace, 
harmony, purity, activity, or work, joy, gentleness, goodness, 
honor, virtue, bravery, holiness, meekness, humility, holy 
desires, holy ambitions, daily growth into the likeness and 
favor of God, the illumination and progressive sanctifica- 
tion of the Holy Ghost, the eternally progressive office-work 
and functions of the Triune-God. For, in the final thought, 
the greatest riches in the future, will be the Triune God, 
in a loving relation to each of His redeemed children. 

This tabulation will be improved by the reader; some of 
its redundant terms may be omitted, and many terms may 
be added. Which would you capitalize? Let us meditate 
upon them ; let us examine ourselves that we may see whether 



119 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

already the riches of the Kingdom are in us, at least, in 
their germinal forms? Whatever our attainments may 
already be, it still is possible that the ardor of our love 
shall be intensified, and the Star of Hope shine more bril- 
liantly in our horizon, in nadir and zenith of our earthly 
pilgrimage. 



1 20 



Enjoyments of Heaven. 



"Beyond these chilling winds and gloomy skies, 

Beyond Death's cloudy portal, 
There is a land where beauty never dies, 

Where Love becomes immortal. 

A Land whose life is never dimmed by shade, 

Whose fields are ever vernal; 
Where nothing beautiful can ever fade, 

But blooms for aye eternal. 

We may not know how sweet its balmy air, 

How bright and fair its flowers; 
We may not hear the songs that echo there 

Through those enchanted bowers. 

The City's shining towers we may not see 

With our dim earthly vision, 
For Death, the silent warder, keeps the key 

That opes the gates elysian. 

But, sometimes, when adown the western sky 

A fiery sunset lingers, 
Its golden gates swing inward noiselessly. 

Unlocked by unseen fingers. 

And while they stand a moment half ajar. 

Gleams from the inner glory 
Stream brightly through the azure vault afar, 

And half reveal the story, 

O, land unknown! O, land of Love divine! 

Father, all-wise, eternal, 
O, guide these wandering, wayward feet of mine 

Into those pastures vernal." 



CHAPTER XII. 



ENJOYMENTS OF HEAVEN. 



It is natural for us to suppose that the enjoyments of 
Heaven will be similar to those and, in many respects, 
identical with our present delights. The North American 
Indian dreams of "happy hunting grounds," the shade 
and wildness of the vast forests where he may lead the free, 
out-door life to which he has been accustomed, and for 
which he has natural fitness. Who can tell assuredly that 
he will be disappointed, and that in God's universe there 
will not be abundant room for the gratification of his de- 
sires, refined, of course, of all savagery and bloodthirsti- 
ness, for we write only of redeemed persons. 

''The tasks, the joys of earth, the same in Heaven will be 
Only the little brook has widened to a sea." 

Many of our sweetest and most innocent pleasures here 
are connected with nature in her various forms and moods. 
It was Anaxagoras who used to say that he had come into 
this world to admire the sun. The dwellers in the antip- 
odes look for a Heaven largely of the environment, where 
they shall no longer suffer those extremes of temperature 
to which, nevertheless, they have become accustomed, 
and in which they are not unhappy. 

Our delight depends largely upon the gratification of 
our aesthetic sense, and not alone upon our moral judgments ; 
upon our sense of the beautiful, as well as upon our appre- 
ciation of the good; how great, then, must be the possibili- 
ties of happiness in that land of beauty! 

There are few, if any people who do not enjoy the change, 
the variety, the information that come from travel from 

123 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

exploration, especially if one has a congenial traveling com- 
panion. What delights do not await us when the whole 
universe shall be thrown open to us, and ample time given 
for its exploitation! 

Perhaps the lines that immediately follow may not be 
regarded, by the reader, as germane to the theme of this 
chapter, but the experience related, and the pictures pre- 
sented, may they not be duplicated, think you, a million 
times as we shall range this universe, and see its marvels, 
and adore Him who is the Creator of all its beauties ? We 
already possess the capacities and susceptibilities of beauty, 
and will then have the time to gratify our love of the true, 
the beautiful, and the good, and through nature be led 
nearer and nearer to nature's God. 

THE PALACE OF THE SUN. 

It is midnight on Maui's lonely Isle, 

One of Haiwaii's group, where stands supreme 

Old Haleakala, ''House of the Sun." 

Four thousand feet above tempestuous seas, 

Guide Yasamori, Christian Japanese, 

And Gomi, best of hosts, and best of men, 

A hurried breakfast take, impatient now 

To mount the patient, waiting, saddled mules, 

To carry us along the mountain's side 

In zig-zag lines until the crest is reached; 

This crest a crater is ten thousand feet 

And more above the restless sea that laves 

Its feet, and weaves a fringe of foam as white 

As snow around its spreading, mighty base; 

But now our thoughts are not on things below, 

For we must reach "Stone House" in time to see 

The rising of the glorious god of day. 

We ride o'er lava-beds as sharp as blades 

124 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Of steel, — from which our well-shod mules strike out 

The fire in sparkling founts around their hoofs. 

The Southern Cross, in all its beauty, stands 

Beneath a waning, but unclouded moon; 

Five hours our ride is pressed through stunted growths, 

O'er jagged rocks, through ferns whose fronded leaves 

Deceptive daggers hide that lurk beneath, — 

And then the roofless "House of Stone" is reached. 

The morning star, mistaken for a fire, 

Glows on the mountain's brow with brilliancy. 

That vies in splendors with the softer lights 

Of waning moon and paling Southern Cross. 

Cold are the beauteous lights which blaze above, 

And sparkle 'neath our feet, — they cannot warm 

Our limbs benumbed with cold. Beneath the touch 

Of Gomi's skilful hands another fire burns, 

And comfort gives. What eagerness to see 

The whelming panoramic views which here 

Transcend the thoughts and pen of man. 

We are 
In ample time to see Phoebus Apollo, 
Though here he rides his car two hundred miles 
More swiftly by the hour than in the States. 
And now his herald spears enable us 
To look around; five thousand feet above 
The crest-line of the shore, and deep, blue sea. 
Are clouds, themselves a sea; above that sea 
We stand five thousand and one hundred more, — 
Or, higher than ''Cloud's Rest," that snowy peak 
In loved Yosemite. Enraptured we 
Have gazed aloft, but now, from lordly height. 
Look down five thousand feet on polar seas 
Of moving clouds; anon, a shifting rift 
Another mile of added depth reveals. 
Entranced we gaze on polar seas of clouds, 

125 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Not floculent, nor vague, nor meaningless 

But glistening with the frosts of Arctic cold, 

Where ice-bergs march, Pelion on Ossian piled. 

Look, now! A surging mountain you may see 

Roll o'er another mountain like a strife 

Of gods. And here are striking semblances 

Of glaciers well remembered in the Alps; 

Seracs Alaskan; walls of gleaming ice; 

Ravines with newly-fallen snow engirt; 

Mont Blancs below, as once from Chamounix 

We gazed aloft, and longed and sighed to reach 

Its rounded crest of snow and ice and storms. 

This wondrous panorama, never still. 

But shifting, rolling, breaking, into forms 

Fantastic; changing color, too, as well 

As form, for each ecstatic sand of time. 

It is a common thing, too human far. 

To see the earthly side of shifting clouds; 

Above them, then you see their heavenly sides, — 

With meanings and with beauties strange and rare. 

But, later in the day, a breeze arose, 

When swiftly all these giants of the skies 

Bestirred themselves; then there were ships with sails, 

And horsemen, centaurs, chariots, sculptured forms. 

Colossi of the air, commingling all 

In one amazing panorama rare. 

To break our fast, the crater, e'en ourselves, 

That we were cold, — this we forgot ; but felt 

Like him who on Transfiguration's Mount 

Would build three tabernacles, and abide. 

Now, yonder, to our left, the East is gold, 
And changing into deeper, glowing red 
And crimson, for Apollo comes, is near, 
And swiftly nearer bounds; the clouds that lie 

126 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

In strata on the horizon's edge, now burn 

With fires of approaching day. See where 

In all this splendour, in its very midst, 

A tip of brilliant, corruscating fire 

Appears, like lime-light, but enlarging fast: — 

It is the glorious orb of day booms up 

And into sight, while all the hurrying clouds 

On that same level catch, and multiply 

This glory manifold, a thousand fold 

In every rainbow hue. The splendid disk, 

Whose rim revolving fairly blinds the eyes. 

Is now above the horizon's line; yon moon, 

Whose golden light o'er molten lava beds 

Our cheer, now pales before intenser light; 

The Southern Cross grows dim, and slowly fades 

From sight; but all the heavens, the sea of clouds. 

The mighty mountain on whose rim we stand, 

Declare in speechless, matchless eloquence, 

The glory of our God. 

The day advanced, 
A new enchantment brings; the clouds ascend, 
Descend, and through their rifts we glimpses get 
Of seas as blue as is fair Naples' bay. 
Or, like the iodinic waves that beat 
The castle walls of old Chillon ; snow-caps 
Of foam the breakers wear, and dash in lines 
Upon the circling shores. Beyond the sea, 
To left and right, and, mingling with the sea, 
A charming landscape captivates the eye : — 
Kohala's mountain blue, Hualalai, 
And Mauna Loa; monarch of them all 
Is Mauna Kea, fourteen thousand feet 
He lifts his glistening helmet in the air; 
And, yonder, to our right, is Molakai; 

127 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Oahu, too, with Honolulu, breaks 
The line of vision, dull and dark the sky 
Against. 

This is the vision from the "House," 
From Haleakala, ''House of the Sun," 
On Maui, isle of the Haiwaiian group. 
Where floats the starry banner we love the best. 

In such lines of thought as the foregoing there is much 
room for delightful theorizing, but let us pass on now to 
some of the certainties. One of these is, that much of our 
misery comes from our bodies; we have the treasure of our 
souls in "earthen vessels." Because of the limitations, 
the diseases, the mortality of the body, we "groan, not 
desiring that we should be unclothed, but, rather, that we 
should be clothed upon, that mortality should be swallowed 
up of immortality." 

"There shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor cry- 
ing, NEITHER SHALL THERE BE ANY MORE 
PAIN." Write it in letters of gold. Write it upon the 
face of the sun, and spell it with stars across the darkest and 
stormiest night of thy sorrows, so that all may read it. 
Write it in unfading letters of faith upon thy memory, O, 
suffering child of God, thou shut-in one, languishing all 
thy life-long on beds of pain, with thorns in thy flesh that 
even faith and prayer cannot remove: "There shall be no 
more pain." "The former things are passed away." 

"They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, 
neither shall the sun light on them, or any heat." "For 
the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead 
them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe 
away all tears from their eyes." 

"For we know that if our earthly house of this taber- 
nacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we 

128 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house 
from Heaven." 

Such a body can never die. ''There shall be no more 
death." What volumes of prose and poetry have been 
written about "Death." But the poetry of the future will 
deal more with life, in all its infinite variety, and untrace- 
able ramifications. As physical death is the breaking of 
the correspondence with our physical environment, so spir- 
itual death is breaking from, or separation, from God who 
is the soul's true environment; there will be no death of 
the soul in Heaven, for the soul shall delight in His pres- 
ence, "where there is fulness of joy, and at His right hand 
where there are pleasures forevermore." 

The exclusions of Heaven are tears, death, sorrow, sin, 
temptation, and "all pain." If anyone can fully grasp 
the import of these words, he will conceive of a place and 
a state for which men would pay millions and billions of 
dollars, if it could be secured that way. But, "thy money 
perish with thee." 

It is also certain that we shall be free from mental imbe- 
ciHties. "We know only in part." There is little perfec- 
tion in the knowledge of men. The known speedily merges 
into the unknown. All our powers are finite; memory 
fails; reason blunders; the imagination wearies and drifts 
too easily into dangerous realms; judgments are warped 
because of the limitations and imperfections of knowledge 
upon which they must always depend; the will fails to choose 
that which is true and righteous; our mental imbecilities 
are vitally connected with our remorse, our life and con- 
science, and thus they give rise to human misery, and often 
to crimes and wars. The promise is that "we shall know 
as we are also known." 

In Heaven all our powers will be at their best ; our habitat 
will be much more conducive to their growth than here; 
our guides and instructors, the facilities and opportunities 



129 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

will be as much better as Heaven is better than earth; 
as perfection is better than that which is only fragmentary 
and imperfect; as light is better than twilight, or darkness. 
Here we have penumbra, and umbra, and eclipse, there 
constant and perfect light. Here we toil up laboriously to 
make gains, but there we shall swoop down upon what we 
desire as an eagle from his heights; here we grow by sweat 
of brain, by persistent, laborious effort; there, too, effort 
will be necessary but it will be more like breathing, or like 
seeing here, and will involve no rack of brain, or nerve, 
or mental torture. Here many of the brightest intellects 
have burned themselves out before their fires were scarcely 
kindled. 

It is said of Robert PoUok, a prince of Scottish bards, 
that, when in the 27th year of his life, he had given to the 
world, his immortal "Course of Time," he had also com- 
pletely exhausted his bodily resources, and his poor body 
went to the grave the same year his poem was given to the 
world: — 

''Unconquered powers the immortal mind displayed, 
But, worn with anxious thought, the frame decayed; 
Pale in his cell, and o'er his lamp retired, 
The martyr student faded and expired." 

But in Heaven there can be no pain either of body or 
mind; there shall be no mental decay; the work of the mind 
is here largely dependent upon the condition of the body; 
a Corliss engine cannot do its work in a building of straw; 
a mind cannot act normally, and do its best work in a body 
held together only by bandages and medicaments. This 
suggests man's possibilities when every limitation shall 
be removed, with all weaknesses. 

I take in my hand a nestling. I cannot yet tell what 
kind of a bird it is, whether a common chick, a humming- 

130 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

bird, a mocking-bird, an eagle, or a vulture. I must give 
my nestling time. Just now it is repulsive; it is a feather- 
less, hairless, naked, ugly thing; it has a long neck, open 
mouth, closed lids, and dangling, ungainly limbs. Shall 
I throw it away as a useless, unpromising thing? No; 
wait, give it time; some day, you may see on it the beauti- 
ful apparel of a humming-bird, shining and glowing like 
a ball of fire as it whirrs in the midst of the flowers of the 
tropics; or, if its apparel shall not be so brilliant, it may pour 
out liquid notes of praise; it may sing like the sky-lark, or 
thrush, or give us all the marvellous imitations and original 
notes of the American mocking-bird; or, mayhap, it will 
require still more time, this uncouth, repulsive nestling, 
only more time, and you shall see the mighty wings, the 
muscles and tendons, white and strong, of the eagle; you 
shall see the eye of the golden eagle that can look un- 
blenched into the blazing light of the god of day in his 
meridian glories, and can soar to an altitude where the 
vision of man cannot follow him, maintaining himself at 
untold heights with scarcely the flutter of a feather, or the 
waving of his royal pinions, and a glorious type of man's 
possibilities to rise above sublunary things, and to overcome 
all obstacles. 

So shall it be with this being we call "man," ''created in 
the image of God," "made a little lower than the angels," 
"crowned with glory and honor," whose life shall hence- 
forth nm parallel with the life of God, endowed with tran- 
scendent intellectual, moral and spiritual faculties and 
capacities that have no limits or bounds; having five phys- 
ical and five spiritual senses, and will have still others 
added, of both kinds: — give him time, only time, and he 
will put on an exterior garb more beautiful than that of 
any angel or archangel; give him time in the eternities, 
and he will sing as only the redeemed can sing; he will 
blend his voice with the harmonies of Heaven where roll 



131 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

the anthems as mighty waters roll, or, on tender, velvet 
wings, hint out their touching melodies; time, and he will 
rise higher than eagle ever soared, or thought of dreaming 
man ascended; time, only time, and he will enter, as Foster 
says, the world of spirits, of angels, of men immortal, and 
of God. Give him only time, and he will glow in the worlds 
of truth, of beauty, of love and worship and eternal friend- 
ships, as never glowed the stars and constellations in the 
bestudded skies; time, and he will rise higher and still 
higher in the scale of intellectuality and spirituality in that 
world of unending progress, of personal unfolding, of joy 
without any alloy of sorrow or pain. 

Heaven's enjoyments will thus consist in our possessing 
a spiritual, deathless, painless body, the immortal temple of 
a redeemed spirit, free from all mental imbecihties, and, I 
dare now add, freedom, also, from all moral defections 
and depravity. They that enter there are first pure. If 
not beyond the power, or susceptibility of temptation, yet 
they are so holy and high in their redeemed and sanctified 
and glorified natures as to be eternally safe; they have be- 
come ''pillars in the temple of their God," to go out no 
more forever; they have been tried and tested; they now 
understand all motives, and all the machinations of the 
evil one who so persistently sought their eternal ruin; the 
gravitation of their nature is now wholly and forever to- 
wards their God and holy things; there is no longer the 
least admixture of evil; they are beyond the attractions of 
this life. O, what a state that will be! If its contempla- 
tion fills one with unspeakable delight, what must its 
possession be? Absolute and eternal deliverance from 
sin, from every evil tendency or thought. On this planet, 
sin has dug every grave; it has caused every sigh and groan; 
it has made our every bed of pain ; it would blight and blast 
our every fair flower of hope and peace; it has deluged the 
soil of this world with the purest human blood; it has had 

132 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

no mercy on widows and orphans, but has made them what 
they are; it has put manacles on our hands, gyves around 
our brains; it has crushed our hearts without pity and re- 
lentlessly; it has brought into our bosoms bitterness and 
malice, jealousy, hate, wrath, lust, and revenge, and let 
loose upon the race all the diabolism of the pit; it has trans- 
formed itself into an angel of light, and has led the very 
elect of God astray; like a dark shadow of the night, like 
a skeleton of death, like a grinning death's head, like a 
mirage of beauty, like a serpent skilled in reason and able 
to "make the worse appear the better" and to substitute 
bitter for sweet, and night for day, — it has followed, and 
will follow us till we have drawn our last breath. 

But, thank God, even in this life, we get complete vic- 
tory over sin in every form, as far as the saints are person- 
ally concerned, but we must still Hve in a world of sin where 
its frightful and disgusting forms are all about us, and where 
we are its inevitable sufferers. But, beloved reader, there 
shall be no sin in Heaven; nor shall its fruits obtrude them- 
selves there; you and I shall be washed whiter than the 
driven snows of winter; whiter than the snows that glow 
and glisten in the sun far above the snow-line; our natures 
shall be filled and thrilled with the holy presence of truth, 
of love, of gratitude and praise, and all those untold felici- 
ties which shall flow from our new environment and our 
new natures and our new bodies. 

O, what hath Jesus bought for me ? 

Before my ravished eyes: 
Rivers of life divine I see, 

And trees of Paradise. 
I see a world of spirits bright. 

Who taste the pleasures there! 
They all are robed in spotless white. 

And conquering palms they bear. 

^33 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

O, what are all my sufferings here, 

If, Lord, Thou count me mete 
With that enraptured host to appear, 

And worship at Thy feet! 
Give joy, or grief, give ease or pain. 

Take life or friends away. 
But let me find them all again 

In that eternal day. 

— Charles Wesley. 



134 



Employments of Heaven. 



What though unmarked the happy workman toil, 
And break unthanked of man the stubborn clod? 

It is enough, for sacred is the soil, 
Dear are the hills of God. 

Far better in its place the lowHest bird 

Should sing aright to Him its lowHest song. 

Than that a seraph strayed should take the word, 
And sing His glory wrong. 

Friend, it is time to work. I say to thee, 
Thou dost all earthly good by much excel: 

Thou and God's blessing are enough for me: 
My work, my work, — farewell! 

— Jean Ingelow. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



EMPLOYMENTS OF HEAVEN. 



We can never be inactive and happy at the same time, 
either in this or any other world. Any proper conception 
of Heaven must include the idea of ceaseless, tireless, but 
agreeable employment. In this life, every muscle and nerve 
and organ of the body plainly show that we were made for 
motion. The mind as well as the body cries insatiably for 
action. The mind never rests; even when the body is in 
a state of comparative quiet, the mind enters the mysteri- 
ous realm of dreamland, and finds some of its highest or 
basest activities. Besides, we are in a world of wonderful 
motions. This planet moves on its own axis, and, at the 
same time, spins in its orbit around the sun in such speed 
that everything upon its surface has a motion of at least 
one thousand miles per hour, and nineteen miles per second 
in its orbital journey; and, whether it be planet or satellite, 
fixed star or nebulae, constellation or meteor, — all have 
motion, and in their motion 

"Forever singing as they shine. 
The hand that made us is divine." 

If, therefore, anyone lives without something to do, he 
becomes a discordant note in the midst of the harmonies 
of this universe; he becomes a parasite, a leech, a tramp; 
he "kicks against the pricks" of his own nature, and be- 
comes "of all men most miserable." There is no higher 
joy in this world than to be overwhelmed with congenial 
work, with activities suited to our tastes and qualifications. 

What a vision of contentment, happiness, and homely 
industry Longfellow gives us in his "Village Blacksmith": — 

137 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

''Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, 

Onward through Hfe he goes; 
Each morning sees some task begun, 

Each evening sees it close; 
Something attempted, something done, 

Has earned a night's repose." 

How different is this picture from the one given us by 
some other poet who speaks of the feeling at the close of 
a wasted day: — 

"Who's seen my day, 'tis gone away, 

Nor left a trace in any place; 

If I could only find 

Its footfalls in some mind. 

Some spirit-water stirred 

By wand of deed or word, — 

I should not sit at shadowy eve. 

And for my day so grieve, and grieve." 

But Longfellow continues: — 

** Thanks, thanks, to thee my worthy friend 

For the lesson thou hast taught; 
Thus at the flaming torch of life 

Our fortunes must be wrought, 
Thus on the sounding anvil shaped 

Each burning deed and thought. 

But, when these lines are slightly paraphrased, they will 
be quite as applicable to oiu: life beyond the grave, as fol- 
lows: — 

Toiling, rejoicing, and praising, 

Onward through LIFE he goes, 
Each morning sees some task begun^ 

138 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE 

Some morning sees its close; 
Something attempted, something done, 
Has earned a sweet repose. 

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend 
For the lesson thou hast taught: 

Thus in the heavenly, glorious life, 
Our joys will still be wrought. 

Thus on some blissful anvil shaped 
Each burning deed and thought. 



Constituted as we are, made, as we are, for physical, 
intellectual and spiritual activities, we could never be happy, 
normal, or even contented without something to engage 
all our energies, and that, too, all the time. Here we often 
sigh for rest, as though rest were cessation from work, 
when it is, in reality, simply a change of occupation, re- 
leasing some nerve or muscle, and bringing others into play, 
as some poet has well said; — 

"Rest is not quitting 

The busy careers- 
Rest is the fitting 

Of self to its sphere. 

*Tis the brook's motion, 

Clear without strife. 
Fleeing to ocean. 

After its life. 

Deeper devotion 

Nowhere hath knelt; 
Fuller emotion 

Heart never felt. 



139 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

'Tis loving and serving 

The highest and best; 
'Tis onward unswerving, — 

And that is true rest." 

Even in this life everything depends upon our activities, 
health depends upon it; our happiness, our usefulness, our 
successes are inseparably connected with it, and even our 
moral purity; for, 

"The mountain stream, when foul with stains 
Of rushing torrents, and descending rains, 
Works itself pure, and, as it runs, refines, 
'Till by degrees, like floating mirror shines." 

The difficulty now seems to be to get a proper adjustment 
of work and recreation; we overdo the first, and have too 
little time for the last; from the very nature of our surround- 
ings, the business demands that we all must meet, the battle 
for bread, in our present civilization with its multiplication 
of human wants, — our lives are predestined to run in grooves; 
ihey become sordid, mechanical, humdrum, material; or, 
upon still lower planes, they become so fascinating that we 
rarely rise to the "higher levels" upon which we were really 
made to walk, and where the higher and purer joys can alone 
be found. But when the adjustments are properly made, 
then is labor high and holy; it is, then, essentially, of the 
nature of worship. As the planets move in their orbits 
where God has placed them, and as they can serve their 
Maker only by ceaseless activity within the limits of their 
orbits, and as they would rush to a speedy and fiery death 
if they were to veer a hair's breadth out of their appointed 
limits, so man best serves God when he performs his ap- 
pointed tasks, and thus, too, he attains most speedily unto 
his highest happiness and usefulness. It was Mrs. Osgood 
who sang aptly and truly: — 

140 -^^^ 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

"Labor is life; 'tis the still water faileth; 

Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth; 

Keep the watch wound, or the dark rust assaileth; 

Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon. 
Labor is glory. The flying cloud lightens, 
Only the waving wing changes and brightens, 
Idle hearts only, the dark future frightens, 

Play the sweet keys wouldst thou keep them in tune. 

Labor is rest from the sorrows that fright us; 
Rest from all petty vexations that meet us; 
Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us; 

Rest from world-sirens that lure us to ill. 
Work, and pure Slumber shall wait on thy pillow; 
Lie not down 'neath Woe's weeping willow, 

Work with a stout heart and a resolute will. 

Work for some good be it ever so slowly. 
Cherish some flower, be it ever so lowly. 
Labor, all labor is noble and holy, — 
Let thy great deed be thy prayer to thy God." 

The motives for labor in Heaven will, doubtless, be differ- 
ent, though some will remain. If our memories are not 
obliterated, we may prevent the resuscitation of the dark 
things of this life, the griefs and disappointments that might 
follow us there, by ceaseless and joyous activities. Kipling 
has some quaint lines upon this point: — 

''When earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are 

twisted and dried. 
When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest critic 

has died. 
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it, lie down for an 

aeon or two. 
Till the Master of all good workmen shall put us to work 

anew. 

141 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

And those that were good shall be happy; they shall sit in 

a golden chair, 
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of 

comet's hair; 
They shall find real saints to draw from, — Magdalene, 

Peter and Paul; 
They shall work for an age at a sitting, and never be tired 

at all. 

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master 

shall blame; 
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for 

fame. 
But each for the joy of working, and each, in his separate 

star. 
Shall draw the things as he sees them, for the God of Things 

as they are." 

Doubtless, many hours and years shall be spent in the 
adoration of the divine character and attributes, its un- 
fathomable perfections; the instinct of praise and worship 
is divinely implanted, and saints delight in it wherever you 
find them. With the sweet singers of Israel, they say: — 

"How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts. 
My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the 
Lord; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God, 
even Thy altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my 
God." 

This instinct of worship will, doubtless, grow in our na- 
tures, and become much more dominant, than it ever has 
been here in our best spiritual state, for the environments 
in Heaven will be much more germane to every tendril of 
adoration; besides, our conceptions of God, and what we 
owe Him, will be so enlarged and clarified that our praises, 
our adoration and worship will be but the natural expres- 
sion of our glorified spirits. 

142 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

I am, nevertheless, in perfect accord with the following 
lines by Robert Beverly Hale: — 

"We know we are not worthy of Thy love; 

We know, we know we have not done our best; 
But when Thou takest us to Thee above, 

Rest, rest, dear Father, only give us rest. 

Such is the song they sing. I cannot bear it. 

All men must sin; but no man need to shirk; 
Show me some noble task, and let me share it; 

Work, work, dear Father, only give me work. 

Our thoughts of Heaven are surely wondrous odd. 
Just sitting still, and praising God all day; 

That would be hard, indeed, for praising God 
Is more in what you do than what you say. 

Poor, weary weaklings! Are we, then, so tired? 

Just fit to blow gold trumpets and feel blest ? 
To sit and smile, and be inspired ? 

Can one's life-work win everlasting rest ? 

O, shame! Shall I give up my high endeavor? 

Shall I pretend my store of strength is gone ? 
Shall I claim peace, and joy and bhss forever. 

And take my rest, while God is toiling on ? 

Father, what future's mine I cannot tell; 

But when I have begun my life anew, 
I care not where, in Heaven, Earth, or Hell, — 

O, Father, give me some hard work to do. 

Forward along the road that He has given. 

We cannot stay to count the strength we spend. 

Nor stop for rest in any idle Heaven, 

For God's own work shall never have an end." 

143 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

These are normal thoughts, and they find responses in 
the heart of every normal man and woman; in all who are 
busy here, and have eaten of the elysian sweets of employ- 
ments approved of conscience and of God. No man is 
so fortunate as the man who is willing to work, and finds 
himself in the midst of congenial, and self-compensating 
activities; and no man is so unfortunate as the man who is 
willing to work and unable to find engagement for his ser- 
vices. Such a man's work must be the work of finding work, 
followed tactfully, persistently, with cries and tears, 
perchance, to God who will speedily open up a way for a 
determined spirit; otherwise earth were hell, and God were 
not the God of Providence and of love, and the great and 
willing Helper of all who call upon Him. 

All the poets, from Shakespeare and Milton, down to 
the present hour, have emphasized the thought of our 
heavenly engagements, and that vre shall be, must be, busy 
there, or we could not be happy, Lowell said, on the death 
of Channing: — 

*'Thou art not idle; in thy higher sphere. 

Thy spirit bends itself to loving tasks. 
And strength to perfect what it dreamed of here 

Is all the crown and glory that it asks. 

For sure, in Heaven's wide chambers there is room 
For love and pity, and for helpful deeds; 

Else were our summons thither but a doom 
To life more vain than this in clayey weeds." 

There is a pleasing philosophy in this thought that our 
happiness will be forever identical with our activities, our 
physical, mental and spiritual industries. What God will 
have for us to do, we cannot fully know though it is hinted 
and partially disclosed in many ways and places. Reference 

144 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

has already been made to the matter of worship, the 
study and adorations of the divine perfections, and to 
our intellectual and spiritual pursuits. We have only to 
remember that the whole universe will be thrown open to 
us for our visitation, study and minute investigation, and 
that every wholesome and normal trend of our minds and 
spirits will find a full and perfect answer and correspond- 
ence. There may be inhabited worlds like our own to 
whose inhabitants we may be ministering spirits; whom 
we shall instruct, rule, and bring as trophies of our zeal 
and industry to the feet of God. What if there should be 
inhabited worlds, and cycles of worlds for us to visit, to 
civilize and instruct? One thing seems to me certain, 
that, as our purest joys here have always been connected 
with our fidelity to every trust, with our "cups of cold water 
given only in the name of a disciple," with our activities, 
lofty, pure and imselfish, — that it will be so in " Yonderland." 
One of our Irish poets has sung: — 

"But blessed that child of humanity, happiest man among 

men. 
Who, with hammer or chisel or pencil, with rudder or plow- 
share or pen, 
Laboreth ever and ever with hope through the morning of 

life. 
Winning home and its darling divinities, love-cherished 

children and wife, — 
Round swings the hammer of industry, quickly the sharp 

chisel rings. 
And the heart of the toiler has throbbings that stir not the 

bosom of kings, 
He the true ruler and conqueror, he the true king of his 

race. 
Who nerveth his arm for life's conquests, and looks the 

strong world in the face." 

M5 



Music. 



Our lives are songs. God writes the words, 
And we set them to music at pleasure; 

And the song grows glad, or sweet, or sad, 
As we choose to fashion the measure. 

We must write the music, whatever the song, 

Whatever its rhyme or metre; 
And if it is sad, we can make it glad; 

Or if sweet, we can make it sweeter. 

—Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

MUSIC. 

This is one of the delights, and also one of the employ- 
ments of Heaven; it is usually so that our chief delight is 
found in our employments, but, because music occupies 
so high and so large a place in the activities of Heaven, 
we devote a short chapter to its consideration. 

God who made us gave us all the elements and powers 
of music; the human voice is a stringed and wind instru- 
ment combined, and, in its range, its powers of modulation, 
its flexibility, the enunciation of language, its sympathy, 
its timbre, and in its limitless adaptations, — in all these 
it is by far the most marvellous and useful of all musical 
instruments. Besides this, behind the instrument is the 
intelligent spirit, to use it for the expression of thought and 
emotion, in musical sounds ranging through all the un- 
limited combinations of the diatonic and chromatic scales. 
Man uses this instrument as soon as he comes into the world ; 
in every niche of life, not always to the praise of his Creator 
as he should, and with his latest breath : — 

"Happy, if with my latest breath, 
I may but gasp His name." 

The voice, in articulate speech and song, will abide in 
Heaven. Nay, the very tones and characteristic modu- 
lations which enable us here to recognize friends and loved 
ones even when we cannot see them. The use of articulate 
language in speech and song is an eternal fount of blessed- 
ness. There, too, the fountain of Music will open in every 
soul, for, as Samuel Rodgers has said:- 

149 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

"The soul of music slumbers in the shell, 
*Till waked and kindled by the Master's spell; 
And feeling hearts, (but touch them rightly) pour 
A thousand melodies unheard before." 



Dryden speaks of how the bounds of Music were enlarged 
by St. Cecilia; these are his verses: — 

* * At last divine Cecilia came. 
In ven tress of the vocal frame; 
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store, 
Enlarged the former narrow bounds, 
And added length to solemn sounds. 
With nature's mother wit, and arts unknown before. 
Let old Timotheus yield the prize, 

Or both divide the crown: 
He raised a mortal to the skies. 

She brought an angel down." 

But the real realm of music, not only as to its original 
home, but for its enlargement and perfection, is in Heaven. 
No one can ever hear it in its perfection until he walks in 
the land of love, of light, of beauty, of elysian glories. Not 
until the heavy pressure of grave responsibilities, of busi- 
ness cares, of exacting duties, is finally and fully removed; 
not until perennial health and eternal youth become our 
lasting possessions, — then shall we sing; then shall our ears, 
too, be unstopped, our auditory range be increased to take 
in the ''music of the spheres." As there are objects so large 
that we cannot see them, and others so small that, without 
the aid of the microscope, they would also escape our at- 
tention, so myriads of the sweetest sounds are either far 
above or far below our present musical range and creation, 
and cannot therefore, be heard; but we shall b*»ar them 

ISO 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

then. These softer tones that we do not now hear, these 
microscopic sounds, will 

"Come o'er our ears like the sweet south 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing and giving odor." 

We commiserate people who are not susceptible to musi- 
cal sounds, and are unable to produce them ; they lose one 
of the very chiefest delectations of this world of musical 
sounds. Shakespeare says of such: — 

' ' Therefore the poet 
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; 
Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage, 
But Music for the time doth change his nature. 
The man that hath no music in himself, 
Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sounds. 
Is fit for treason, stratagems and spoils; 
The motions of his spirit are dull as night, 
And his affections dark as Erebus, — 
Let no such man be trusted." 

It is, indeed true, that evil men and women, as a rule, 
have no real music in their souls, though they, too, have the 
physical means of producing it. But it is also true that 
some of God's children cannot sing; for a variety of reasons 
this is so, though every one must have, and does have music 
in his soul. But Heaven is the home of music and song, 
and, therefore, each and all, will not only have it in himself, 
as Shakespeare says, but will be able to give it vocal expres- 
sion. 

Let us go to the great poet once more, for he was the 
oracle, and it was he that found ** sermons in stones, books 
in the rimning brooks, tongues in trees," and good, if not 
God, in everything. 

151 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOURSQUARE. 

Lorenzo: — How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank; 

Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 

Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night 

Become the touches of sweet harmony. 

Sit, Jessica ; look, how the floor of heaven 

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; 

There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest 

But in his motion like an angel sings, 

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims; 

Such harmony is in immortal souls; 

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. 

But "this muddy vesture of decay" we'll drop and rise, 
and we will enter the realm of music, the realm of God's 
immediate presence, as naturally as a bird to its nest, or 
a tired child to the bosom of its affectionate mother. 

All the poets and hymnists have sung the praises of 
music. Art, too, has given her immortality in sculpture 
and painting. Raphael, in his ''Rapture of St. Cecilia," 
has the patroness of this art, and the traditional inventress 
of musical instruments, drop every instrument to the ground 
as sounds of Heaven's music reach her ears, while even the 
practical St. Paul, with his regal head supported by his hand, 
is in an attitude of reverential attention, and listens to the 
rapturous music of the "invisible choir," chanting and 
singing the melodies of Heaven, while musical instruments 
of all kinds lie untouched and forgotten around his feet. 

When Christ comes into the heart as its abiding guest, 
Music comes, too, and always: — 

"There is music in my soul to-day 

A carol to my King; 
And Jesus, Hstening, can hear 

The songs I cannot sing." 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

But in dear " Yonderland" we can and will sing them, 
for that is a state and a land 

''Where Music dwells 
Lingering and wandering on, as loath to die, 
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof 
That they were bom for immortality." 

It is our privilege, sometimes, on earth, to hear music, 
vocal or instrumental, or both combined, that satisfies our 
sensitive natures, and lifts our souls to a very heaven of 
aesthetic and religious delights. 

In a great city I once heard a choir of five hundred 
selected and cultured voices, accompanied by an orchestra 
of one hundred instruments, then regarded as the best ag- 
gregation of instrumentalists in this country; this orchestra 
was under the baton of a man well known on both sides of 
the Atlantic as a composer and musical director. Only a 
great city of a million or more of inhabitants and immense 
capital can make such a combination of musicians a pos- 
sibility. They produced an oratorio of one of the great 
masters on the night I heard them, in a hall suitable in 
size and in its acoustic properties. How diverse were the 
effects! Yet, how sweet, how tender, how sublime, how 
majestic and grand, too, were these effects in their turn! 
How thrilling, elevating, and inspiring! 

At one place, in the rendition of the programme, before 
the oratorio was begun, there was perfect silence, and a 
felt spirit of expectancy throughout the audience; the great 
director stood like a statue; no one moved; something is 
about to occur, but few of the vast and breathless audience 
knew what it was to be; you could only see and admire the 
great audience upon the stage, admire the tout ensemble 
of the great orchestra and chorus, and see the flashes'of 
the diamonds upon the bosoms of beauty. Suddenly the 

^53 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

leader lifts his baton; no visible musician responded; no 
vocalist parted his lips; no instrument was touched. Yet, 
listen! What exquisite sounds are these? Whence come 
they? How are they produced? To what may we com- 
pare them? Are they not like the rustling of many far- 
away angels' wings? It is, at any rate, a murmuring, 
humming, rising, falling cadence of exquisitely sweet sound. 
It seems to be Music's very soul and vital breath. So soft, 
at first, as to be scarcely audible, then rising and swelling, 
and again sinking back into most tender pianissomos. 
Whence comes it? It was a surprise to all. Behind the 
scenes there were one hundred trained children who had 
been selected from the public schools where they had been 
specially trained for their part; these, with closed lips, were 
humming and murmuring a melody of indescribable sweet- 
ness. Later, sopranos, and tenors, altos and deep-lunged 
bassos, chorus and soloists, — all with closed lips, but each 
on his several part, unite with the children in the produc- 
tion of tones and semi-tones, lights and shadows of sounds 
whose effects were marvellous, swaying the vast audience 
with unspeakable raptures. Still later, softly, tenderly 
at first, the instruments fall in, and swell the now rising 
tide of music, still without words or sibillation, but as if 
the rapture of a St. Cecilia were in every happy heart, as 
though Music and her sister, Song, were beating their white 
pinions against the crimson portals closed against them, 
but unable entirely to shut them in. This music moved 
and transported and enraptured me as nothing else had 
ever done, save some special spiritual visions and experi- 
ences. It was a strain from Heaven; it was a foretaste of 
what awaits us, in full measure, who are bound to "The 
City That Lieth Four-Square." 

There are, doubtless, choirs, and musical organizations 
in Heaven; children's choirs; angelic choirs; choirs of cher- 
ubim and seraphim, singing music peculiar to themselves; 

^54 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

male choirs, and female, and great choruses, and unions of 
all these and other musical organizations. Why should it 
not be so there, even as it is here? We know of at least 
one male choir, in that land of song, composed of one hun- 
dred and forty-four thousand voices; doubtless, others of 
a similar nature have been formed since that was organ- 
ized. These are '^virgin" men, and ''follow the Lord 
whithersoever He goeth." ''They are redeemed from 
among men, being the first-fruits unto God and the Lamb, 
and in their mouths was found no guile; for they are with- 
out fault before the throne of God." What qualities for 
song do such men possess, and how they will sing forever- 
more! To hear them alone, a choir of such quality and 
numbers, even if there were no other music in Heaven, 
were worth a life-time of self-denial, of self -crucifixion, 
poverty, temptation and bereavement, if, only, at the last, 
entrance is gained into the City where this male choir of 
one hundred and forty-four thousand voices sings. I 
mean, by the help of God, to hear them some day. Dost 
thou, too, so purpose, dear reader? God help thee 
and me! 

Then, too, how the redeemed will sing! That company 
which no man can number, who have come up out of "great 
tribulation, and have washed their robes, and have made 
them white in the blood of the Lamb." They could sing, 
and did sing on earth. They made, by far, the sweetest music 
ever heard in "this vale of tears," for they had sunshine 
and music in their hearts, and they sang of Jesus and His 
love, the best and the most inspiring of all musical themes: — 



"There is no name so sweet on earth, 
No name so dear in Heaven, 

The name before His wondrous birth 
To Christ, the Savior given." 

155 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Is it any wonder'they could sing here with such a theme, 
with such holy rapture in their breasts, their scarlet sins all 
washed white, their feet sandalled with grace and walking 
the upward way of light, peace, of holiness and Heaven, 
the helmet of salvation on their heads, and the harp of a 
thousand strings, (SALVATION) in their hands of strength 
and skill. 

How dreary would this world be without the music of 
God's children in choir, pulpit and pew; in all the assem- 
blies of men and women; at the merry wedding time, and 
in the homes where the angel of Death has been; on the 
streets and in the marts of trade! Into the din and discords 
of this world, magic Music sends her strains of gentleness 
and peace; in the home, the mother, while she rocks the 
cradle of her babe, croons and sings the Gospel lullabies; 
later, the child itself finds natural expression, in innocent 
songs, for the gladness of its heart; and sings as only a child 
can sing; while the aged saint, whose whole life has been 
cheered and blessed by song, continues to sing to the end 
cf his pilgrimage the song of victory. 

But what, after all, is the music of earth compared to 
that of Heaven ? 

Methinks I hear one of the great choirs of Heaven. It 
occupies a vast amphitheatre specially constructed for it 
by some sainted Angelo, Bramante, or Bernini. At the 
radial centre of the vast semi-circumference is a mighty, 
elevated throne gleaming and glowing with soft lights 
emitted from the veined alabaster and colored marbles 
and jewels of which it is made; it is, besides, of the most 
exquisite and elegant architectural design and workmanship 
such as no Nicolo Pisano could model or make. It is now 
the cynosure of millions of eyes, for upon it stands a royal 
director, perhaps, David, the poet-king, with flashing baton, 
now ready to give the signal. But, first, let us look at this 
choir of the skies. Upon either flank are mighty organs, 

iS6 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

larger, sweeter, more perfect and powerful than any earth 
has ever seen; here, too, in front, are harps, with Tubal- 
Cains and Davids to play upon them; but only a small 
part are they of the mighty orchestra with every kind of 
musical instruments that Heaven and earth have yet pro- 
duced; harps and organs, violins, flutes, comets, sackbut 
and psaltery, trombones and cymbals, drums, and every 
form of horn, viols and cellos, zithers and strmged instru- 
ments, with rarely new inventions for the production of 
the most exquisite musical sounds; every form of wind in- 
struments, with every possible combination, all played by 
tireless, enthusiastic, artistic performers. Far above, ris- 
ing in sweeping semi-circles, are at least a million vocalists, 
bassos, tenors, sopranos, contraltos, — all in perfectly bal- 
ancing proportions, and selected for this occasion from the 
billions of happy redeemed musical people who reside in 
the "mansions prepared," in "The City That Lieth Four- 
Square," or Heaven's Capital City, the New Jerusalem. 
These are the very ones who on earth sang out the bad 
and sang in the good; who helped to make this sad world 
a Paradise by their good cheer, their smiles, their sympathetic 
hand-grasps, and their cheering songs, and consecrated 
instrumental music. Now we see them in their true light 
and form ; every player an artist, for Heaven is full of mus- 
ical talent; every singer, with voice and heart, and his whole 
personality tireless, thrilling, and now, perhaps, for the first 
time, fully able to express in vocal execution, what through 
all the years he could only inly sing and dream before. 
But look again at the composition of this choir. We have 
seen only the human elements, and in general view. Look 
yonder on the highest seats, and you will see the angelic 
ranks, cherubim and seraphim, with those "who kept their 
first estate," glorious beings are they, and^masters, every 
one, of the divine art of music ; they have never known sin : 
soon 



157 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Each will touch his golden lyre, 
And clap his wings of fire 
Above, around the heavenly choir. 

Neither must you fail to notice, near the throne, and under 
the very eye of the leader, but above the orchestra, large 
bands, or companies of lovely, sinless children, such as 
Jesus dearly loved, and took up in His arms and blessed. 
What can be sweeter than their voices, and how swiftly 
they learn to sing under competent direction ! 

This is one of Heaven's gala days, and, if the choir, in 
all its parts, numbers a miUion, or more, the audience is a 
vast multitude which no man could niunber; and whether 
you sing or play, with that choir, or simply sit and hear the 
music, and gaze upon the glorious scene, your ecstasy, 
your boundless rapture and delight, after all the tears and 
sorrows of this world, would then surely kill you if your 
capacity for joy had not been enlarged many fold, and your 
spirit were not shrined, as it then will be, in a spiritual, 
glorious body, real, tangible, immortal, with sensations 
and qualities like the risen body of our Lord. But it will 
still be an "unspeakable glory," an unutterable rapture. 
Shall we now listen to the music ? Perhaps, at first, we hear 
only a single pipe-organ, or a single stop of one of those 
great organs, and, then the whole instrument; later, other 
instruments unite; again, a single instrument, or the voice 
of some divine Neilsen, or Florence Nightingale, or a glori- 
fied Whitney, or a divine Capoul, or Campanini, or the 
voice of some raptured saint whose name here was never 
known, but whose voice now thrills all Heaven; again, it 
is a child's voice, a single voice, the sweetest of all Heaven's 
single notes, but so clear, so penetrating that all can hear; 
then, all the children sing together, or antiphonally in groups; 
or, perhaps, the angels join them in their praises; then, 
other parts, and still others, men's voices and women's 

iS8 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

alone and united, — and, at last, every stop of every organ is 
drawn out, the millions sing and play under the control 
still of a single baton until the first chorus, and by far the 
greatest human ears ever heard, is rendered. 

But, look again I I see a new light in every face, a flash- 
ing brilliancy in every eye, a spontaneous springing to the 
feet, and a glad shout of "Halelujah" from every lip, a 
mighty and spontaneous burst of praise and gratitude. 
No one is seated now; what does it all mean? A new 
form has appeared upon the Throne. Who is it? Never 
did my eye rest upon a being of such supreme majesty, such 
divine beauty; it is, indeed, the King of all kings; the Lord 
of all lords it is the Wonderful, the Prince of Peace, the 
Bright and Mornmg Star; it is JESUS, the SAVIOR of 
men; my Savior. O, to sing and play instruments imder 
His eye who is the Creator of all the realms of nature, 
of all music, who made the voice, and put into his uni- 
verse all the elements of sound and music of whatever kind. 
He is about to give the signal for another chorus; He holds 
in his pierced hand a cross ; it is made of light, and is 
the symbol of His love, truth and power. He smiles on 
the radiant, happy millions who can scarcely restrain their 
emotions of bliss, and who would now be glad to cast every 
crown, every ambition at His pierced feet. Now, a hush; 
then He lifts the cross that has lifted worlds, and peopled 
all Heaven. Once again that choir sings as never before, 
and every instnmaent seems possessed of a soul of its own, 
and cries aloud melodiously for very joy. Now one of the 
great male choruses, the "virgin men," high and holy in 
their characters, composed of one hundred and forty-four 
thousand men, sing imder the direction of their Master 
Whom they have always loved with a consuming devotion. 
Like the voice of many waters, and as the voice of many 
thunderings, they sing, saying: "Alleluiah, for the Lord 
God omnipotent reigneth." 

159 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Yes; they sing: "And they sing the song of Moses, the 
servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying: "Great 
and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just 
and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints. Who shall 
not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name ? For Thou 
art holy; for all the nations shall come and worship before 
Thee; for Thy judgments are made manifest." 

Thus they sing new oratorios; the wondrous story of re- 
demption; of a new creation; of salvation from sin; they 
sing in full chorus, and responsively with all the unlunited 
variations and combinations of two worlds, and possible 
to such a choir with such themes, still saying: — 

"Amen!" "Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanks- 
giving and honor and power and might be unto our God for- 
ever and ever. Amen!" 

Then, at the close, the Lamb, who has been in the midst 
of the Throne, "shall feed them, and shall lead them unto 
living fountains of waters." And, if there be any more 
tears, "God shall wipe away all tears from off their faces.** 



i6o 



Satisfied. 



" Far out of sight, while sorrows still enfold us, 
Lies the fair country where our hearts abide. 

And of its bliss is naught more wondrous told us. 
Than these few words: *I shall be satisfied.* 

*I shall be satisfied.' The spirit's yearning 
For sweet companionship with kindred minds, — 

The silent love that here meets no returning, — 
The inspiration that no language finds, — 

Shall they be satisfied ? The soul's vague longing, — 
The aching void which nothing earthly fills ? 

O, what desires upon my heart are thronging, 
As I look upward to the heavenly hills. 

Thither my weak and weary steps are tending: 
Saviour and Lord, with Thy frail child abide! 

Guide me towards Home, where, all my wanderings ending, 
I shall see Thee, and shall be satisfied." 



CHAPTER XV 

SATISFIED. 

*'I shall be satisfied when I awake in His likeness." 

Once I accidentally overheard the conversation of the 
two most generous rich people I ever knew. Up to that 
time I had believed them to be perfectly satisfied with their 
life and possessions, and with the good they were doing. 
They gave away, in a variety of charities, more money, each 
year, than anyone in the city in which they lived; a growing 
charitable institution bore their honored name. But, in 
this conversation, to which I was to them an unknown and 
forced listener, I heard them deplore their inability to do 
more, and what they would do if they only had more money; 
they were dissatisfied because they did not have greater 
means to carry out much broader plans of usefulness and 
beneficence; their inability to do so was to them a real dis- 
tress; they were not happy. 

Lack of means is a universal discontent; there are more 
people dissatisfied with their means, or, their lack of means, 
than with anything that can be named. Not always, nor 
usually, in the noble manner just mentioned; more fre- 
quently, it takes the form, not of simple discontent, but 
positive malcontent; a striving and fighting for more, and 
still more of this world's goods, not that they may be given 
away, but that they may be hoarded, or used for still other 
and larger accumulations. 

But while this form of discontent, or malcontent is uni- 
versal, if is far from being inclusive; it is simply a species un- 
der a broad genus. Who is there that is perfectly satisfied? 
The forms of unrest are as diverse as the personalities in 
which they are persistent forces. 

163 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

I talked with an old sea-captain once; the very brine and 
tempest of the ocean, upon which he had lived for thirty 
years, seemed yet to play in his deep-set, heavily-browed 
eyes, and rumple his shocky hair; there was a saltiness 
about his speech which smacked pleasantly of the sea. 
He was a landsman now, and had been for many years, 
and he knew that he could never return again to the "life 
on the ocean wave," to his loved home *'on the rolling 
deep." His family, his business, his physical infirmities, 
his duty, — all held him on the land. But, every day, more 
or less, did he sigh for the sea, for the dear old life; he felt 
that he could never be perfectly happy on the land. He 
was homesick for the old life which was depicted by etchings, 
paintings and steel engravings which adorned his beautiful 
home. O, to feel once more the rolling, swelling tempes- 
tuous waves! To breathe once more the fresh, salt-air, 
so invigorating and pure! To rest the eyes on the broad 
expanse of old ocean, to watch its marvellous life, its varied, 
kaleidoscopic beauty and sublimity, the most entrancing 
and varied in all this world: "Ah, me! it would prolong my 
life to a century." 

But, on the sea, I conversed with another old sailor who 
was very tired of his sea-faring life which, like the other, 
he had followed for many years; he was counting the days 
when he would be released from his "confinement to a 
vessel," to use his own phrase; he sighed daily for his resi- 
dence on shore, a cottage covered with clambering vines, 
with roses, ivy and honeysuckle, where he had a wife and 
children from whom he had been separated so long, too long, 
where relatives and friends were ready and waiting to wel- 
come him, and give him a home in their affections. One 
of the sweetest passages in all God's word to him, is this: 
"And there shall be no more sea." This old tar had in his 
bosom that restlessness, that dissatisfaction which, in some 
form, is a disturbing element, to say the least, in every life. 

164 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

How few attain to the Pauline standard, and are able truly 
to say: "I have learned in every state wherein I am, there- 
with to be content." "Every ship is a romantic object 
save the one we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits 
our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon." 

Now, if in the above instances, each could have had his 
wish granted; if the ''old salt" could have returned to the 
sea of which he dreamed every day, and the sailor upon the 
high seas could have entered his rose-cottage, and remained 
there with his family and relatives, — how long would they 
have been satisfied? How long until one would have 
dreamed of his home, the land, and the church he loved so 
well? And the other, of the charming life on the "rolling 
deep"? Soon each would have been as restless as ever, 
or, at least, each would have had disturbing visions and 
dreams with an element of pain as well as of beauty and 
pathos in them. These are world-wide, typical cases. 

I know a very successful physician; he collects, at least, 
ten thousand dollars a year from his regular practice, and, 
besides, has many perquisites and added emoluments. 
He is fond of society, his club, the theatre, the hotel lobby, 
and of the pleasures of this life. But he thinks that min- 
isters are the favored class of the whole creation; that they 
have leisure, time for reading, travel, social joys, long vaca- 
tions, while he is a slave to his profession. This physician 
would like to be a clergyman, especially if he could take with 
him his ten thousand a year, his club and pleasures, into that 
genteel, well-dressed profession. But I can find you scores 
of dissatisfied, (perhaps ungrateful) clergymen who are quite 
ready to take this physician's place, with all its drudgery, 
its night-calls, his frenzy at people who call him when they 
do not need him, and at those exasperating times when he 
is more sick than they, all his disagreeable and nerve- 
straining work, all his most exacting duties, — they will 
gladly take it all for ten thousand dollars per annum, 

165 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

perfectly willing to forego, meanwhile, the ease, the travel, 
the reading, the vacations, to say nothing just now, of the 
ever-recurring, and most exacting, delicate, and difficult 
duties of a minister's life. 

This feeling of dissatisfaction may not be a permanent 
element in the character of either physician or clergyman, 
but it is, nevertheless, a potent factor in the lives of thousands 
of unfortunate cases, often leading to a change of profes- 
sions, a trading of horses in the midst of the stream of life, 
against which Mr. Lincoln and other philosophers have so 
strongly and wisely advised. For, in such cases, success 
is very rare, and still greater restlessness and uneasiness, 
often resulting in the most distressing pain, is a common 
result. 

We must discriminate between dissatisfaction and the 
mere feeling of not being satisfied; between positive mal- 
content and mere discontent. One is a corrosion, a carking, 
painful thing — sand in the machinery of life; the other is 
a divinely-implanted instinct, and a coiled spring of progress; 
it is a tonic, a goad which we all need to prod us on, to drive 
us out of ease and natural lazmess into the activities which 
lie within the range of our chosen callings. In the midst 
of our unrest, we may still find contentment through our 
activities, for, neighbor to every want will be found its 
natural supply; it is the function of the want to reveal its 
own supply; our very restlessness leads us not foolishly to 
change our vocation, but in it to utilize our talents, and feed 
the flame until its ardor is felt no more, or until it is really 
extinguished. It is, mdeed, better, as a rule, "to endure 
the ills that are than to fly to those we know not of." Better 
to fight in your own armor, even though it be but a sling 
and a few pebbles carefully selected, and adapted to your 
training and strength. 

In the cases that have been cited, and in a multitude of 
others, nothing would be better and more wholesome, 

i66 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

however painful the experience, than to make the exchanges 
sighed for, as in the case of the physician and minister, 
until each should learn that nothing is better than the duties 
of our station, and that it is infinitely better to seek the ut- 
most qualifications for the places we now occupy than to 
sigh for the honors and emoluments of others; that we are, 
most probably, in the very niches of life where God would 
have us be; by such exchange, we would learn, too, that 
embarrassments, thorns, difficulties, drawbacks that we 
never dreamed of, belong to every station of life. 

It might be worth the while to say here that, paradoxical 
as it may seem, the best and the quickest way out of a lowly 
place, is to remam in it. Merit, like murder, will out. 
When a large man finds himself in a small place, one of 
two things must happen: either the large man will expand 
the small place to his own superb dimensions, and so make 
it worthy of his occupancy, or, he will use it for a stepping- 
stone to a larger place waiting for him and already seeking 
him; there is only another possible sequence, namely, that 
the large man may cease to remain such by the narrowing, 
contracting force of the place he occupies; in that case, 
his fate is sealed, and he becomes a mediocre. But, con- 
versely, if a small man find himself in a large place, only 
one of two things can happen; either the large place will 
eject the small man, or the small man will awaken to his 
situation and opportimity, and speedily make himself 
worthy of the place. Herein lie the law and the history of 
promotion. 

Who is satisfied? Should not ministers be an example 
to the flock in this, as in all other matters ? But ministers 
in one state sigh for the "greener pastures" of another state. 
They want a better, or, at least, a different climate, church, 
office, or salary. Some of the episcopal churches embarrass 
their bishops to the full limit of their endurance, and far 
beyond their power to make the required adjustments, 

167 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

with applications for transfer to better conditions of climate, 
church, residence, ofl&ce, work, or salary. I do not say that 
all this is wrong; far from it; it may be, or it may not be. 
I do, however, cite it as a fair illustration of the discontent 
that there is in all classes, the unsatisfaction, if not chafing 
dissatisfaction, imtil there is no longer any East or West for 
''the Star of Empire." 

Who is perfectly satisfied ? Are you, reader ? With the 
locality where you live? Would you not rather live, at 
least for a term of years, in Florida, or California, or on an 
Island of the Italian Lakes, or in some great city, or in the 
quietude of the country, and dream pastoral dreams as 
Wordsworth did at Grasmere ? Are you satisfied with your 
salary, or income? Are there not multitudes with royal 
incomes who are not as meritorious as you are ? You have 
worked hard always; you have fine talents, but it simply 
has not been your fortune to be recognized and appreciated 
at your true and full value; neither your abilities nor your 
industry have ever received an adequate monetary recom- 
pense. Are you satisfied with the attentions shown you? 
Do you not sometimes chafe under a sense of neglect and 
utter lack of appreciation? How many of your inferiors 
have you seen rapidly sent above you in position and emol- 
uments! Are not the goods of this world very unequally 
divided? Why should there be millionaires striving to 
become billionaires, when multitudes have scarcely the 
necessaries of mere existence, and so few the luxuries of 
life? 

How about that long-delayed trip to Europe, or Pales- 
tine ? How would you like to spend a summer in Chamou- 
nix, or Switzerland? Or, a winter in the land of your 
dreams? You are not very well; you have never had such 
a vacation, or outing; you are over-worked, and tired, O, 
so tired. You need the rest of it, the inspiration of it, the 
culture of it. Thousands cross the continent, or the 

i68 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Atlantic, or the Pacific, every year, — why not you? No; 
you are not satisfied; when you Hsten to the voices of un- 
rest crying in your deepest soul. It is well. God would 
not have you satisfied. 

Just such a series of questions might be addressed to our 
deepest natures. Are you satisfied with your spiritual 
attainments? Are your hopes as bright, your faith as 
strong, your life as pure, your consecration as perfect as 
they might be, as they should be ? Are you ever burdened 
with a sense of sins, especially for sins of omission? Is 
there not much that has been left undone that might have 
been done ? Are you as kind, as thoughtful, as affectionate, 
as unselfish as you should be? ''No, no, a thousand 
times, no," must be the answer if it be perfectly honest. 
You are not satisfied with your life, whether by "life" we 
mean the physical, the mental, or the spiritual. It must be 
ever so; it can never be otherwise, though there is a peace 
and contentment that nothing can ever disturb, and which 
grows deeper and sweeter as time rolls on. "My peace I 
give unto you ; my peace I leave with you ; not as the world 
giveth, give I unto you." "Let not your heart be troubled, 
neither let it be afraid." 

Does not all this mean that we should plan for the future ? 
It is the only way in which we may hope to realize our golden 
visions and dreams. Many a beautiful castle in the air 
has become more tangible and visible, and as it has become 
so, it has settled down and out of nebulosity until it has 
stood solid and four-square, an accomplished fact, on the 
soil of this world. First the dream, then the reality. No 
vision, no reality. Better to dream and see visions, even if 
they can never become realities, than never to dream at 
all. Once a friend whispered "Europe!" in my ear; it was 
only a whisper; the dream, a wild, distorted thing, had been 
there long before; it needed but that whisper of a friend to 
make what has now long since been a memorable reality 

169 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

more beautiful now to dream over than were even the orig- 
inal castles in the air. Later have followed journeys over 
our own fair and diversified lands, with trips to Alaska, the 
Haiwaiian Islands, Mexico, while still other dreams of 
travel abide. Will they, too, become realities ? 

It is impossible to write of restlessness, dissatisfaction, 
mental nervousness, ambition, day-dreams, castle-building, 
without, at the same time, noting how they are the basis 
of progress, and how they link themselves to a future 
broader and longer than the narrow bounds of this life. 

Restless? Yes; perchance you are in a rural place, a 
country village, fixed there for years with no hope of change. 
Yet you are cultured, while all the people around you are 
uncultured; you are attuned to the finest harmonies, to 
the professional, the scholarly, the classical, and cultured, 
but you are now doomed to suffer from your environments, 
from intimate association with the raw, the crude and the 
boorish, from discords and amateurishness, from med- 
iocrity and barbarisms, and, shrink from the thought as 
you may, you find yourself gradually lowering to these en- 
vironments. Often you dream of the city, of refined cul- 
tured people as the loved associates of yourself and family; 
how sweet it would be to be surrounded by those who could 
appreciate you, your character, and the children of your 
brain. Again and again come the words of agony to your 
lips: *'How long, O Lord, how long?" You are not sat- 
isfied. For God's sake, and for the sake of all that is best, 
DO NOT BE! Never be satisfied! Do not, however, 
chafe or worry, or complain even, or find fault with God or 
man, — only do not be satisfied. 

^'Thou and To-day, a soul sublime, 
And the great, pregnant hour of Time, 

And God Himself to join the twain, 
Go forth, I say, attain, attain." 

170 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Climb, strive, achieve, attain, persevere; not less, but 
how more work, — that is the law of life; not the law of 
being, but of LIFE. Remember, too, that every heart, 
especially every great heart, carries its own burdens and 
peculiar sorrows. There is no exception, and there is no 
royal road to the higher happiness. In all human proba- 
bility, your sorrow, whatever it may be, is lighter than that 
borne by many around you, but so heroically, so uncom- 
plainingly borne as to have escaped your notice. Make 
some inquiry; get beneath the calm surface, and all around 
you, you will find the dramas, the tragedies of life. And 
while you look, put forth your hand and heart to help. 

''Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter. 
Feelings lie buried that grace can restore. 
Touched by a human hand, wakened by kindness, 
Chords that were broken, will vibrate once more." 



Then, up, and on forever! ''Aut viam veniam, aut 
faciam." That is the spirit of this age of material things, 
and has, forever been the spirit of the Christ and of His 
people. 

"I shall be satisfied, when I awake in His likeness." 
Whatever it may mean, it cannot mean that my ambitions 
shall cease, that my energies shall stagnate, that I shall 
cease to think, to dream, to plan and achieve in that broader, 
sweeter, higher realm. The likeness to Him will not be 
simply material, though that alone must be inconceivably 
glorious and satisfactory, but it will be especially ethical 
and spiritual., Christ on earth was a very focus of burning 
activities; He was nervous, restless, energetic, potent, om- 
nific, but always calm, self-centered, peaceful as a Summer's 
day. He is still the center of all holy action, and the very 
heart of life, drawing all men unto Himself. 

171 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

To be satisfied will be to be like Him. This satisfaction 
will consist, in part, in seeing Him as we were never able to 
see Him before; in seeing, also, that our present station was, 
and still is the best for us; that we have within our reach 
everything that is essential to carry out any plan in harmony 
with the laws of God and of His universe; that the foun- 
tains of peace and content are within the limits of our own 
personalities. 

It is said of Moses that "he had respect unto the recom- 
pense of the reward." ''We endure as seeing Him who 
is invisible." Heaven is a radiant star, or a flaming Sun, 
so set in the heavens that we can always see it; no night' 
or clouds, or storms, or distance can ever hide it, — they 
all only make it shine more brilliantly, and bring it nearer 
to Him whose gaze is fixed upon it. While so near, it is 
yet higher than any mountain, or than any thought, or imag- 
ination, — yet again, it reflects itself in oceans, lakes, and 
flowing streams, or in quiet pools, and lightens all the 
journey, or voyage of life. O, yes, To-morrow will be better 
than To-day. I shall rest by and by. "I shall be satisfied 
when I awake with His likeness." 

This is a universal principle. Even the Oriental who has 
not been enlightened by God's words of hope and faith, 
dreams of rest, of oblivion; his spirit will enter Nirvana soon. 
Or, the atheist dreams of utter annihilation, perfect forget- 
fulness and extinction; he will go out as a candle that has 
burned out, — there is nothing more to burn. Incompar- 
ably superior is the Christian's knowledge and hope, amount- 
ing to demonstration. ''For I know in whom I have 
believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that 
which I have committed unto Him against that day." 



172 



Faith and Hope. 



"Primeval Hope, the Aonian muses say, 
When man and nature mourned their first decay; 
When every form of death, and every woe. 
Shot from mahgnant stars to earth below; 
When Murder bared her arm, and rampant War 
Yoked the red dragons of her iron car; 
When Peace and Mercy, banished from the plain. 
Sprung on the viewless winds of Heaven again; 
All, all, forsook the friendless, guilty mind. 
But Hope, the charmer, lingered still behind." 

— Campbell. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

FAITH AND HOPE. 

This brief chapter is not a treatise on Faith and Hope. 
It is, rather, a corollary of the preceding chapter, and is 
intended to show how Hope and Faith are elements of our 
spiritual nature, naturally connecting us with the "things 
above." To be under their control, and to consent to be 
guided by them, together with Love, is to be natural, and 
to lead a normal life; it is to get back into right relations 
with God, our fellow-men, and God's universe. 

"We have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge 
to lay hold upon the hope set before us. Which hope we 
have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and 
which entereth into that within the veil! 

An anchor must have weight, grappling points, and must 
touch bottom, to be of any use. Hope is the inspiration 
not only of youth, but of maturity and old age. It is made 
up of desire and expectation ; it is a white bird on the mast, 
visible in every storm; it is the spring in the mechanism, 
giving resilency and motion to all that is best in man; it 
is the cork on the upper edge of the net, lest the lead of life 
should drag us down to a bottom of ooze and death. Hope 
gives stability; it anchors, but its chain is long enough to 
combine the utmost freedom with unshaken steadfastness. 
Hope gives purity. "For every man that hath this hope in 
him, purifieth himself as He is pure." 

The poet, after appealing to the ocean, the moon, the 
west, the isles, and finding rest in none of them, sings: — 

"Tell me, my secret soul, 
O, tell me, Hope and Faith, 
Is there no resting-place 

175 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



From sorrow, sin, and death ? 

Is there no happy spot 

Where mortals may be blest, 

Where grief may find a balm, 

And weariness a rest? 

Faith, Hope, and Love, 

Best boon to mortals given, 

Waved their bright wings. 

And whispered: 'Yes, in Heaven'." 



Hope is full of comfort. She is a colorist; she paints only 
in the brightest colors; she dips her brush into sunbeams; 
she borrows the tints of the roses, tulips, lilacs and daisies, 
she has about her the fragrance of the honeysuckle and the 
migonnette; she borrows from morning-glows and zenith 
splendours; she has gathered all that is fairest and brightest 
and purest and sweetest from valley and hill, from lake and 
mountain, from all God's Paradises (for He has many), and 
she pours it all forth again from full and inexhaustible 
cornu-copias, into the bosom of every true child of God. 
She is forever optimistic; she knows no backward glances, 
and shakes off the hindering, distressing, clinging cere- 
ments of the present; she refuses to have anything to do 
save only with the fresh, untrodden, unsullied, alluring 
pure, and smiling future. She says: "Look yonder to the 
heights." "Dost fhou not see the rainbows, the verdure, 
the fragrant flowers, and the fruits fit for angels' fare?" 
"Hear the music of the birds, of cherubim and seraphim, 
and of the redeemed, for, if thou wilt listen, thou mayest 
already hear the music from the Mainland, even here on 
the Island of this, thy mortal life; be patient a little longer; 
endure as seeing the invisible near at hand." "Tomorrow 
will be better than To-day." 

176 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



HOPE'S SONG. 

I hear it singing, singing sweetly, 

Softly in an undertone; 
Singing as if God had taught it, — 

"It is better farther on." 

Night and day it sings the sonnet, 

Sings it while I sit alone, 
Sings it so my heart will hear it: 

''It is better farther on." 

Sits upon the grave and sings it, 
Sings when the heart would groan. 

Sings it when the shadows darken: 
"It is better farther on." 

"Farther on! How much farther? 

Count the milestones one by one? 
No; no counting, only trusting, 

'It is better farther on.' " 

Pity, men and angels, and God pity, too, the soul whose 
eye is never lifted by hope to the future of another and a 
better coming world. Such are the trials, the sorrows, the 
vexations, and temptations of this life, at its very best, that 
we all need this central attraction, the promise of that life 
where "we shall be satisfied," the "Hope that dwells eter- 
nal in the human breast." Only we cannot adopt Farrar's 
phrase, "Eternal Hope," for the Book both teaches and 
warns us that if we do not enter into His kingdom here and 
now, if we are excluded at last because we reject Jesus Christ, 
for "no man cometh unto the Father but by me," — then will 
Hope fold her bright wings never to spread them again, 

177 . 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

and we shall surely enter the land of hopelessness and de- 
spair. Dante's legend, written over his ''Inferno," is, 
doubtless true: — 

"All hope abandon, ye who enter here." 

Faith, the sister of Hope, unites her voice in blending 
harmony, and says in unshaken accents: "It is all true; 
you shall be satisfied." "I shall be satisfied." Reason 
wants to know how it is possible and whispers many 
doubts, but Faith says sturdily : "It will all come to pass. 
Every promise shall become beatific realization." Faith 
paints no pictures; she is not a painter nor a poetess, but 
a sturdy prophet and seer; she admits of no doubts or 
wavering; she rests impHcitly in the "Thus saith the 
Lord." That, with her, is the end of all controversy; she 
is clear-eyed, telescopic in vision; she can see better in the 
night-time than in the day-time; better in the twilight than 
at noonday; she needs no artificial aids; she never hesitates 
for a single moment; her conclusions are as swift and as 
unerring as inspired intuitions; she steps out into space 
expecting that the Hand of God will be there to bear her 
up; that He will make the rolling, shifting waves adamant 
under her adventurous feet; unlike Peter, she keeps her 
eyes upon God, and not upon the threatening waves 
around her; for that reason, she never falters, never sinks. 

Faith, after a while, like Hope, becomes a soul-habit, 
and triumphs over every difficulty, literally over every ob- 
stacle, over trials of patience, sorrows, calamity, youth, 
old age, death, and over things worse than death a thou- 
sand fold; she is perfectly adapted to every station, to all 
periods of life, climate or condition; to every nation and 
tribe, to every degree of talent or culture, and is as much 
an integral part of our personalities as is memory or reason, 
or as our organ of vision. Faith sustains the same relation 
to our spiritual nature that the organ of vision sustains to 

178 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

our body, and, just as light is the objective reality of sight, 
so is Truth the correspondence, or objective answer of Faith. 
There is just as much sense and Scripture for praying for 
an increase of faith as there is in praying for the increase 
of the powers of our memory or reason, or for our bodily 
vision, — just as much but no more. Usually when we pray 
for faith and its increase, we mean that we want the fruits 
of faith. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the 
word of God." Faith comes by its exercise, and that is 
made easy by the presence of the Holy Spirit; to have more 
faith, exercise the faculty as you now possess it; to have 
more and better memory, use your memory as it now is; 
it will strengthen by use, and in no other way; the same is 
true of faith. 

When we analyze any distressing dissatisfaction here, 
we find that it is usually made up of selfishness, pride, 
jealousy, ingratitude, or some other sin, subjective or ob- 
jective, or, perhaps, it is the outgrowth of some permanent 
defect or blemish of character for which we may not be 
wholly responsible. But this is something different and 
low^er than the dreaming, the ambition which impels us to 
ceaseless activities, and makes us give our "castles in the 
air," a local habitation and a place among our achievements. 
The dissatisfaction of pride, of selfishness, and of other 
evil humors of the soul, is, possibly, the only kind that will 
be taken away from us, that shall cease to exist in root or 
seed "when we shall awake in His likeness." 

Many of the dissatisfactions of this life arise from our 
misunderstandings; because we misinterpret motives and 
conduct; we have been bitter against a brother or sister, 
when, if we had really understood them, we should have 
given them the hand of help rather than the bitter tongue ; 
we are disappointed in our friend, not because he merits 
it, but because we do not understand him, and we our- 
selves do not have the charity "which thinketh no evil." 

179 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

**If we err in human blindness, 

And forget that we are dust, 
If we miss the law of kindness 

When we struggle to be just, — 
Snowy wings of peace shall cover 

All the plain that hides the way, 
When the weary watch is over, 

And the mists have cleared away. 

When the mists have risen above us. 

As our Father knows His own, 
Face to face with those that love us. 

We shall know as we are known, 
Love, beyond the Orient meadows. 

Floats the golden fringe of day. 
Heart to heart we bide the shadows 

Till the mists have cleared away." 

Faith is vitally connected with our satisfaction. When 
we leave the table, we are satisfied; that is, satis, facio, 
made full; but, in a few hours, especially if we work or ex- 
ercise, we return again to the same table as hungry as ever, 
and so on through all the period of our physical lives; our 
physical life depends upon the gratification of our appetites, 
and there are few physical delights sweeter than the supply- 
ing of our hunger and thirst by wholesome, suitable food 
and drink. Thus, too, we shall be satisfied when we have 
received ''all the fulness of God." Faith is never satisfied; 
it seeks new truth for its incarnation; it ever returns to the 
banquet spread before it on the limitless tables of truth. 
And, as by faith, we partake more and more of the divine 
nature, whether in this world, or some other; as we grow 
into His likeness, the earth and the things of the earth lose 
their attractiveness; we are made to feel the superior 

i8o 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

attraction of another world ; we are drawn toward Him and 
into Him. ''And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men 
unto myself." 

As the eye was made for light, the lungs for atmospheric 
air, the tympanum for sound waves, the hand for grasping, 
truth for faith, and Heaven for hope, — so, man was made 
for God, and in the image of God. He can, therefore, 
never know rest, he can never be satisfied until, like the dove 
fluttering over a wild waste, he returns to the Ark. Man 
must have physical and mental and spiritual food; his spir- 
itual environment is Gcd; as herbivorous animals die upon 
the food for the carnivora, and visa versa, so man, without 
God, dies on the best side of his nature; to be "dead in 
trespasses and sins," is the most direful and awful of all 
calamities. 

The disturbing element in this universe, is sin. There 
can be no rest, no real satisfaction anywhere as long as sin 
rules; to be wholly emptied of it; to be forever in love with 
holiness, and filled with the "divine fulness"; to be sincerely 
and with the whole nature in quest of God; to "pant after 
Him as the hart pants for the cooling water-brooks"; 
to be absolutely pure and holy because of the presence of 
the Holy One, and to be practically, (though not really) 
impeccable, as we shall be "when we awake with His like- 
ness," — that it is to be satisfied. 

It is by the exercise of the faculty of faith that we appre- 
hend and receive the truth as it is in Christ. The Bible 
emphasizes the efficiency and the need of faith. "Believe 
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy 
house." Faith is always antecedent to the spiritual life, 
and to the "satisfying portion." When faith, under the 
illumination and urgency of the Holy Spirit, embraces the 
truth, then Hope begins to sing, a new optimism begins to 
reign that takes no denial, and that enables the soul to move 
on in constant victory. 

i8i 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

"Soon the shadows will be gone: 

Soul, sing on! 
Night is drifting to the dawn, 

Soul, sing on! 

Soon the vales of morning blest, 
Tired, yet thankful, thou shalt rest 
With God's roses on thy breast, — 
Soul, sing on!" 



182 



Personalities in Heaven, 



"And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell 
of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jepthah; of David 
also, and Samuel, and of the prophets; who through faith subdued 
kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the 
mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of 
the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed vaUant in fight, 
turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their 
dead raised to Hfe again; and others were tortured, not accepting 
deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection; and others 
had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds 
and imprisonments; they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, 
were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in 
sheep-skins and goat-skins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; 
(of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts 
and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth." 



CHAPTER XVII. 

PERSONALITIES IN HEAVEN. 

Nothing is so permanently interesting as great person- 
alities. We can never take such deep, such delightful, such 
self-compensating interest in places or things as we do in 
persons. As a fountain of knowledge, of inspiration, for 
the attrition and polishing of the mind, for the increase of 
spirituality, for all enduring good, — nothing can equal as- 
sociation with godlike but human personalities. It were 
worth while, even in this life, to cross a continent, or spend 
a fortune, to live, even for a few years, under the influence 
and affluence, the stimulating sunshine and benediction 
of a great man, or woman; such a nature stimulates and 
fructifies all that is noble and holy in us. It is not books, 
but personalities that mould and build us chiefly; our par- 
ents, our teachers, our ministers, and most intimate asso- 
ciates, — it is they that have carved us and modelled us more 
than anything else save only that subjective power of vo- 
lition, of free choice which places us above angelic ranks, 
and makes us kin to God. 

Deeds are forever less than personalities. The greatest 
achievements of genius are only scintillations of the person- 
alities whence they flash. The best painting, the best 
statue, the best structure, the best sermon, is never the 
measure of the person which gave it birth and being. 
There is always more and better behind. The richest 
gems never lie glittering and radiant upon the surface; 
you dig the gold; you dive for the pearl; you climb for the 
view; personality is like that; it is deep, and high, and in- 
exhaustible. Shah Jehan's architect designed and built 
for him the Taj Mahal, a mausoleum for his favorite wife; 

in mosaics and jewels; it was 

I8S 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

twenty-one years in building, and, during that time, twenty 
thousand artisans and workmen were employed upon it; 
it cost fifty millions of dollars. When it was finished, 
the cruel Shah put out the eyes of the architect that there 
might never be another Taj Mahal which might rival or 
eclipse his own. This merciless Shah well knew that the 
personality is greater than its highest achievement, and 
that were still other and more perfect Temples germinating 
in the fertile brain of his architect. There are other domes 
than that of St. Peter's in Michael Angelo Buonarotti's 
cosmic soul, and other statues of Moses in that inexhausti- 
ble personality, than the one called forth by Pope Julius 
n., and now adorning the church of San Pietro di Vinculi, 
in Rome. What sermons have been preached by Wesley, 
Spurgeon, Simpson, Brooks, Parker, and Beecher, but 
more and better slumbered in these men than were ever 
spoken by their eloquent lips. It is said that 

"Round sweet Xenophon rapt myriads hung. 
And liquid honey dropped from Plato's tongue," 

and what fire flashed from Shakespeare's eyes; what verses 
rolled from the stylus of Homer like unto his own ''poly- 
phloisboian sea," or his "rosy-fingered Morn"; what grace 
and beauty adorn the verses of England's poet-laureate 
as he sang for many happy years in London and on the 
Isle of Wight. But each and all had but fairly tried their 
wings, had but begun to sing in the language of truth, in 
stone or marble, or upon the canvas, when their pinions were 
folded, and their voices hushed by death. Here, as we 
have shown in another chapter, we have an unanswerable 
argument for the immortality of the soul. But why repeat 
the thought in different forms ? The personality is like the 
widow's cruse of oil; the more you take out of it, the more 
there is in it; or; like the bread the Master blessed and broke 

i86 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

for the multitude; it multiplies, and grows more sweet and 
nourishing the more it is broken in holy service ; or, like the 
memory, or any other faculty, the more it is used in nor- 
mal ways, the more retentive, the more facile and strong it 
becomes, and, as far as we know, there is no limit. 

Let us dwell a moment on the thought of Heaven's per- 
sonalities in their entirety. Endeavor to group them in 
your mind; then analyze and individualize the different 
groups. How well-nigh infinite in their variety and diversity ; 
kaleidoscopic and inexhaustible in their interest, and, with 
their individual obligingness, they constitute the best school, 
or university in the universe. All tribes, all kindreds, 
peoples, languages, dialects, nationalities, climates and 
countries will be represented. They shall come from all 
points cf the compass, from all antipodes, and shall sit 
down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of 
Heaven. The possibilities cf such aggregations in way of 
great Councils, Parliaments, Congresses, and Conferences 
will be simply unspeakable, and of supreme interest and 
importance, and will, doubtless, result in the solution of 
many problems for which no possible solutions could be 
found here. 

Consider, too, the possible combinations and permu- 
tations, with groups, and with the individuals constituting 
the almost innumerable groups; they transcend all math- 
ematics, and upon the most interesting, instructive and 
fascinating themes and persons conceivable by the mind. 
It is almost vain to try to mass the possible groups, as it 
is not easy to find principles of classification. But we know 
that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, 
constitute the highest and most important group of all 
Heaven's personalities. God, the Triune God is infinite, 
omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, without origin and 
self-existent, and from eternity through all the eternities 
the same. All mercy, all goodness, holiness, power; all 

1S7 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

light, all perfections are in Him; He will be the peren- 
nial, the inexhaustible Fountain from which all the inhab- 
itants of Heaven may drink refreshing draughts of love, 
of joy, of holy zeal, and knowledge beyond all limitations, 
and beyond our power now to understand or even to dream. 
The Bible clearly tells us that there are other beings of 
whom we know but little now; they are the angels "who 
have kept their first estate"; the cherubim and seraphim 
that linger around the Throne of God. Milton says of 
them: 

"Speak ye, who best can tell, ye sons of light. 
Angels; for ye behold Him, and with songs 
And choral symphonies, day without night. 
Circle his Throne rejoicing." 

Doubtless, there are myriads of these, and as they even 
now are "ministering spirits," sent to guide and care for 
those who are "heirs of salvation," so they will contribute 
mxuch to our eternal felicities. They are beings of great 
power, knowledge, radiancy, and inherent majesty; and, 
as they have never known sin, they will be quite as inter- 
esting to us as we will be to them. What splendid and 
well-qualified escorts they will be to show us the vastness 
and the glory of that Heaven which they have known so 
long, and which has not entered into our imagination to 
conceive. 

But the group in which we shall be most deeply inter- 
ested will be that great "blood-washed throng which no 
man can number." To this group, this vast multitude, 
you and I, dear reader, belong. It is a genus with myriads 
of species. It is capable of many subdivisions; there will 
be the Orientals and the Occidentals; Chinese and Japan- 
ese, European and Negro, the American and the Caucasian, 
and the dweller in the numberless islands, and the Antipodes. 

i88 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Or, the grouping might be made according to mental 
tendencies and vocation while on this planet; what a group 
of scholars and philosophers, poets and historians, authors 
and teachers and ministers, rulers and lawyers, physicians 
and nurses, servants, the "hewers of wood and the drawers 
of water," inventors and discoverers, learned and unlearned, 
kings and princes, queens and menials, and so on almost 
ad infinitum. Or, the grouping might be made on the lines 
of sex, or relationship. Husbands, and wives, brothers 
and sisters, relatives and friends, perhaps long and widely 
separated here, but gathering in Yonderland in ever-in- 
creasing numbers, and involving introductions, and a rap- 
idly-enlarging circle of friends and kindred here unknown. 
Thus will the lost be found, the forgotten restored to memory 
and to loving and unbroken reunion. There will be sur- 
prises, too. O, will it be, must it be that some will not be 
there whom we fully expected to see? Will there be that 
other surprise of finding many whom we did not expect to 
see there ? But it has not been truly nor wisely said that the 
greatest of all the surprises will be to find ourselves there; 
it will, possibly, be the greatest joy, but it will not be a sur- 
prise, for we are now on the way, and already we have 
"Christ in us, the hope of glory." 

What possible denominational aggregations there may 
be! But will there be such unions and re-unions? We 
can, of course, never forget the denominations to which we 
belong, and for which we have labored so long, nor the 
friends, peculiarly dear, we made and cherished in our de- 
nominational affiliations. There must be always kindred- 
ship of minds according to mental bias, training, and 
mental constitution: 

"Blest be the tie that binds 
Our hearts in Christian love; 

The fellowship of kindred minds 
Is like to that above." 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

I can see no objection, but much satisfaction and joy 
in great heavenly convocations, re-unions, and parhaments. 
But they would be for memory, for friendships' sake, for 
ascriptions of praise to God, for new lines of thought and 
investigation, and never for denominational pride and glory; 
there could not possibly be any tinge of jealousy, or pride 
or competition. Every door, like every heart, must be open 
there for the admission of all. I want no Methodist, or 
Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Roman Catholic Heaven; such 
a Heaven is an impossible concept, under the principles of 
Christianity. 

Art thou blood-washed ? Art thou holy by His abounding 
grace? Art thou ''prepared for the prepared Place"? 
Have you conquered and are you still conquering by faith 
in the crucified One? No other question is worth the 
asking. Then enter thou, "into the joy of the Lord." 
Then mayest thou dwell ''in His presence where there is 
fulness of joy, and at His right hand where there are pleas- 
ures forevermore." 

The suggestiveness of this chapter may be enhanced by 
a little further grouping. The patriarchs will be there. 
What sublimely interesting characters will Adam and Eve 
be! They are unlike all other created intelligences, strictly 
sui generis. Enoch, Noah, and the three men whose names 
are always spoken together, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, — 
their persons and history, how fascinatingly interesting! 
Methuselah and Melchizedek! Reflect, also, upon the 
poets and the prophets, those tall luminaries in the early 
dawn of history, then, as still, the beacon-lights of the cen- 
turies. What a magnificent coterie will be all the splendid 
characters of the Bible in both the Old and New Testament 
Scriptures, including, as they do, the pioneers of all the civ- 
ilizations, the earliest apostles, evangelists, reformers, mis- 
sionaries, and martyrs, — men and women who "counted 
not their lives dear unto themselves," for the sake of the 



190 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Christ and God whom they loved and served. From the 
first centuries, following the lines of Egyptian, Assyrian, 
Greek and Roman histories until now, an ever-increasing 
host of the wisest and best, the vanguards and leaders of 
all that is worthy and best, — these all are gathered there, 
and will be accessible to you and to me. We might, too, 
make groups according to languages and dialects ; every one, 
from the Garden of Eden, when there was but one lan- 
guage, to this time of babel, when there are hundreds of 
languages and dialects, will be represented. Will each re- 
member his native tongue? In India alone there are one 
hundred languages and fifty dialects spoken by about 
three hundred million people, Aryan, Dravidian, Kolarian. 
But, doubtless, while each may still be able to converse in 
his own language as he did upon the earth, he will also be 
able to speak the language of Heaven, whatever that may 
be. 

Rapidly now is the populous Orient receiving the Christ, 
and Hindu and Braham, Buddhist and Islam, as they re- 
ceive Him, as, perhaps, all the inhabitants of the Celestial 
City, will speak, at last, that language to which the angels 
have been accustomed in the untold centuries of the past. 
This question of Heaven's vernacular opens up an inter- 
esting field of speculation, but as there is no revelation we 
refrain from entering it. 

I have not yet mentioned another possible grouping, 
or classification, — I mean the children, or childhood. It 
is well known, and it is a delightful fact, that Heaven is 
populous with children, and that there are no children in 
Hell. "Suffer them to come unto Me, and forbid them not, 
for of such is the kingdom of Heaven." "Unless ye receive 
the kingdom of Heaven as a little child, ye shall in no wise 
enter therein." Childhood has humility; it has great help- 
fulness in helplessness; it is teachable and loving; and so 
we too must be if we wish to be the children of the Heavenly 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR SQUARE. 

Father, and to be gathered into His great family, Home at 
last. But what a splendid, what a vastly interesting group, 
and what a host it will be, still retaining all the sweet qual- 
ities of childhood, yet growing and expanding as others 
in their knowledge, love, wisdom, and approach to God. 

As I have reflected upon these glorious luminaries, these 
radiant and peculiar personalities, men, women and chil- 
dren, belonging to every period of history, and to every part 
of this and other worlds, and that I may have all eternity 
to learn of them and with them, — it has seemed to me that 
Heaven is, indeed, worth living for; worth self-crucifixion, 
worth self-denial, fasting, and prayer; worth martyrdom, 
if that should ever be necessary. 



192 



Sorrow and Heaven. 



The Son of God goes forth to war, 

A kingly crown to gain; 
His blood-red banner streams afar, 

Who follows in His train? 
Who best can drink His cup of woe, 

Triumphant over pain, 
Who patient bears his cross below, 

He follows in His train. 

That martyr first, whose eagle eye 

Could pierce beyond the grave; 
Who saw his Master in the sky, 

And called on Him to save; 
Like Him, with pardon on his tongue, 

In midst of mortal pain. 
He prayed for them who did Him wrong: 

Who follow in His train? 

A noble band, the chosen few 

On whom the Spirit came. 
Twelve valiant saints, their hope they knew. 

And mocked the torch of flame; 
They met the tyrant's brandished steel, 
They bowed their necks the stroke to feel: — 

Who follows in His train? 

A noble army, men and boys, 

The matron and the maid. 
Around the throne of God rejoice, 

In robes of light arrayed: 
They climbed the steep ascent of Heaven, 

Through peril, toil, and pain: 
O God to us may grace be given 

To follow in their train. 

—R. Heher 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

SORROW AND HEAVEN. 

Life is not the same to all. Many seem to escape all its 
burdens and sorrows. They are born "with silver spoons 
in their mouths." They walk in paths covered with roses 
and other fragrant flowers; they ride in palace cars; they 
manage to escape the cold of the winters and the heat of 
the summers; they spin their automobiles through parks 
and by the side of lovely lakes and smiling rivers; they "eat 
the fat of the land," and drink nothing less safe and spark- 
ling than Appollinaris. There are, without doubt, many 
inequalities of life, and many of them seem to be provi- 
dential partialities. But these partialities are neither so 
great nor so lasting, nor so advantageous as the superficial 
observer thinks. "God is no respecter of persons." Life 
must be taken in its entirety; there are burdens, vexations, 
and sorrows from which even the rich can have no immunity. 
"There is no going from Delilah's lap into Abraham's 
bosom." There is no such thing as living in sin and get- 
ting the rewards of virtue at the same time. No automobile 
can scale the heights of the mountain of holiness, where are 
found the chief delights of life. There is no immunity from 
death. The other day the richest man in the world died, 
a billionaire, and in the midst of his career; he dies in South 
Africa in the midst of his diamond fields; every diamond 
was left behind, save the diamond of character. Wealth, 
like poverty, has its trials and thorns. "Uneasy lies the 
head that wears a crown." 

The woes of life are more equally distributed than we 
suppose. It is one of our weaknesses to imagine that we 
are less fortunate than our fellow-men. If we were to 
exchange crosses, all the skeletons would come stalking 

195 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

forth from their closets, and, in most instances, we would 
find that, after all, our own cross suits us the best; we are 
accustomed to it; we know its sharpest points, and know 
better how to manage it, and, thus far. His grace has been 
sufficient." Let us not be envious of the rich, or the so- 
called ''great." There is room and use for all, the small 
and lowly as well as the high and mighty; each must fill 
his niche in life: — 

"Just where you stand in the conflict, 

There is your place; 
Just where you think you are useless, 

Hide not your face; 
God placed you there for a purpose, 

Whatever it be: 
Think he has chosen you for it; 

Work loyally." 

It is the purpose of this chapter to show that Heaven 
is not only a glorious, revealed fact, but that it is a phil- 
osophically necessary principle, an ethical necessity, in 
the scheme of life. No one is so strong, so self-reliant as 
not to need the thoughts, the hope of Heaven to aid him in 
bearing the ills of life. 

"Which hope we have as an anchor to the soul, both sure 
and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the 
vail." 

We find Moses, one of the greatest of all the leaders of 
men — erudite with all the knowledge of his time, the palmy 
days of Egyptian culture and art, self-assertive though he 
was, glorying in his strength, and in the miracle-working 
powers which he possessed, and his high favor with Je- 
hovah, — we find him "Choosing rather to suffer affliction 
with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin 
for a season; esteeming the reproaches of Christ greater 

196 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 
rioJies than the treasures of Egypt, for he had respect 

UNTO THE RECOMPENSE OF THE REWARD." 

It is written of Jesus Himself: "Who for the joy that was 
set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, 
and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." 

"Life is a duty, — dare i ; 
Life is a burden, — bear it; 
Life is a thorn-crown, — wear it; 
Though it break thy heart in twain, 
Though thy burden bear thee down. 
Close thy lips, and stand the pain, — 
First the Cross, and then the Crown." 

And it is only the thought of the crown, and that each 
day brings it nearer our possession, which enables us to 
"close the lips," to wear "the thorn-crown" first, and to go 
through life with a "broken heart." 

There is a deep meaning in suffering and pain. Who of 
us ministers has net preached upon "The Mission and 
Mystery of Pain?" It is a discipline which is necessary 
to give us fitness for life and meetness for Heaven. None 
of God's children escapes such discipline, "for whom the 
Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom 
He receiveth." The heart of sorrow is the most fruitful 
birthplace of prevailing prayer. Out of the fiery furnace 
of trial has come the purest gold of Christian character. 
Many have never learned to look up until they were cast 
down deep into some pit, or dark well of human misery, 
f om which there was only one direction to look. The be- 
reavements, temptations, sorrows, storms of life, when met 
by a spirit of courage and faith, are the rounds of a ladder 
on which we rise to God. The divinest arts have been born 
in environments of poverty and despair. God hath chosen 

197 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

the ^^base," the ''weak," the "foolish" things with which 
to "confound the mighty." To the Greek, there is no wis- 
dom in this method ; it is all " foolishness" to him. Possibly, 
there are more Greeks now than in the times of Christ. It 
is when the lofty, the self-sufficient, and the proud are 
brought low that they learn 

"How vain are all things here below," 

and not until then do they begin to look up and beyond 
present realities; it is then that Heaven, as a recompense, 
as a place of eternal joys, begins to draw them, and com- 
fort them for all their losses. 

While we must always deplore the manner in which our 
sorrows have come upon us, and that we ourselves have 
been the chief instruments, yet we may still rejoice in them 
since they have opened our eyes, and turned our attention 
to supernatural blessings and powers. 

Many of the poets have sung of this life as a "tempes- 
tuous voyage," and so, indeed, it is. But the storm is a 
tonic to a courageous heart. How the storm-king some- 
times howls! How every sail is rent, and the masts them- 
selves are down upon the deck! How the breakers rise 
before us, and threaten to engulf us! How timid and 
fearful we are! But, in such a time, like the Moravians 
upon the Atlantic, at whose serenity in a terrific storm, 
Wesley marvelled, the true Christian has no fear, no so- 
licitude, since the sooner "death," the sooner life, eternal, 
painless life with God. As Clausen has sung: — 

"Some day, I know not when or where, 
Beyond the driving tempest's blast. 

Within a quiet harbor-bar 
I shall cast anchor, safe at last. 

198 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Some day, full soon, sweet Eden's shore 
May burst upon my raptured sight; 

And I shall see the Glory Land 
Bathed m the Lamb's eternal light. 

For He who braved the storm-king's wrath. 
And stilled the waves of Gallilee, 

Will safely guide my storm-tossed bark 
Across life's dark, tempestuous sea." 

In the thought of Heaven, there is encouragement for the 
wanderer, the prodigal from his father's house. The deep- 
est anguish is not to bear the death of our loved ones; it is 
not the loss of health and fame; nor is it in the loss of one's 
good name and reputation, bitter as that may be; it is not 
in meagerness, in poverty, or a pinching, narrow environ- 
ment; it is not in being compelled all one's life to occupy a 
lower place than that larger arena which our consciousness 
tells us we could well fill, and better than others who have 
crowded themselves, or have been thrust by influential 
friends, into these larger places; it is not to be victims, all 
our days, of amateurishness when our soul would fain de- 
light itself in the works of the masters; many such lives there 
are, and may God pity them. To all such, the thought of 
Heaven must be very sweet; nothing else can mitigate their 
sufferings. But there may be no sin in all this, and, for 
that reason, none of these conditions can bring the deepest 
suffering. To find that, you must explore the whole per- 
sonality, body, mind and soul, and the environment of one 
who has imbruted himself, who has become besotted with 
vice, and has been rendered, if not entirely, yet well-nigh 
hopeless and despairing, and whose anguish is intensified 
by the thought that it might all have been otherwise; that 
he himself is responsible for the loathsomeness of his life 
and character. From the depths of his untold miseries he 

199 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

cries: "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" 
But there is no response; there is for him no "balm in 
Gilead; there is no kind physician." He is the prodigal 
among the swine of his own choosing. From this body of 
death and c )rruption he cries for deliverance with feebler 
and feebler accents, and yet he sees and knows all the 
while that it emanates from himself, and he is still unable 
to forget a time when it was otherwise; when he was inno- 
cent and pure as others; when, perhaps, he was numbered 
with the saints of God. A Judas, a Byron, a Nero, — ah, 
who can tell? God knows! Strange paradox of human 
life, and yet how true, and borne out by all history, that it 
is often the best, the strongest, the most richly endowed, 
that wander furthest away, and are the most helplessly lost. 
The tragic, the pathetic stories of human frailty in many 
missions and havens and settlements, where lost men and 
women are reclaimed, show us demons in human bosoms 
that it is almost impossible to displace; hells of torment 
whose fires, but for God's restraining grace, would long 
since have dethroned reason, and consumed life itself. The 
reclamation of such characters, their perfect sanctification, 
their future lives of holiness, consecration and unselfish 
devotion to Jesus Christ, not only greatly magnify the 
grace and love of God, but they also demonstrate that faith 
and hope are essential means in the work of reclamation; 
also, that it is better to weep over the fallen, to lift them 
up as Christ did, than to throw stones at them: 

"While the lamp holds out to burn, 
The vilest sinner may return." 



Someone, I know not who, perhaps, Sarah Williams, 
has a little poem entitled, "The Mark of Rank," which fits 
well into this thought: — 

200 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

''Is it so, O Christ in Heaven, that the highest suffer most; 
That the strongest wander furthest and more helplessly 

are lost; 
That the mark of rank in nature, is capacity for pain ; 
That the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the 

strain ? 

Is it so, O Christ in Heaven, that whichever way we go, 
Halls of darkness must surround us, things we would but 

cannot know; 
That the infinite must bound us, like a temple veil unrent. 
While the finite ever wearies so that none attains content? 

Is it so, O Christ in Heaven, that the fulness yet to come, 
Is so glorious and so perfect, that to know would strike us 

dumb; 
That if only for a moment we could pierce beyond the sky. 
With these poor, dim eyes of mortals, we would just see 

God and— die?" 

And this is specially for those who have come up "through 
great tribulation," for it is such that are deeply oppressed 
with a sense of their unworthiness. They have deserved 
nothing "but the wrath and indignation of God," but have 
received nothing but His mercy and love. With Whittier, 
in his deep humility, they sing: — 



"No gate of pearl no branch of palm I merit, 
No street of shining gold. 

Suffice it if my good and ill unreckoned. 

And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace, 

I find myself by hands familiar beckoned 
Unto my fitting place. 



201 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Some humble door among Thy many mansions, 
Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease, 

And flows forever through Heaven's green expansions 
The river of Thy peace. 

There, from the music round me stealing, 
I fain would learn the new and holy song, 

And find at last, beneath Thy trees of healing. 
The life for which I long." 

Night and day, not only alternate, but they touch and 
blend; the darkest night is followed by the most brilliant 
morning; it takes the blinding fog of the mirage to make 
your ship sail clearly in the sky; we learn wisdom by our 
sorrows; our natures are deepened and mellowed and fruc- 
tified by the rending plowshare of pain; the tears of Peni- 
tence clarify the eyes of Faith. "Weeping may endure for 
a night, but joy cometh in the morning.'' We could never 
have the thrill of joy which comes with our returning loved 
ones, if we had not first endured the pain of being so long 
separated from them; we should never have the elegance 
and comforts of the new home, if the old, with all its fond 
memories, had not been torn down, root and branch, to 
make place for the new; the deeper the plowshare goes 
the more mellow and productive the soil becomes; the more 
earnest the cry of the soul the sooner it reaches the ear of 
God; the heart-strings may vibrate in anguish, or they may 
be torn and considered worthless by men, but God can re- 
tune them so that they will make sweeter music for this 
world. Men have no use for "broken things," but God 
has. Broken wings, broken lives, reputation, "broken 
hearts.'* God can and does use them all. To be traduced, 
calumniated, misunderstood, crushed, crucified, the nails 
driven by "friends," who should have lifted up and saved, 
(can anything be harder?) only brings nearer One who 

202 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

saves the innocent, (they, too, need protection), as well as 
the guilty, takes them to His great heart, saves and com- 
forts them. Even here we are already '^safe in the arms 
of Jesus." It is better to spend tedious nights in a den of 
lions, if Jesus be there, than in a king's palace without Him. 
The "I will" of a human spirit, choosing God and Heaven, 
as an irrevocable choice, and in the face of alluring temp- 
tations, is the most sublime thing in human conduct, and 
sets all the joy-bells of Heaven ringing. Spiritual mysteries 
become light and plain when Affliction has burned the dross 
of our materialisms. If we climb to Pisgah's height, we 
shall surely see the Promised Land, and, in God's own 
good way and time, we shall enter, too. 

"Believe, believe 
It is a blessed thing to grieve; 
Knowledge and Pleasure dwell apart; 
Wisdom mates with the broken heart; 
Only the eyes cleansed oft with tears 
Perceive the meaning of the years: 
Unto the sight thus purified, 
The gates of Mystery open wide; 
The patient watching makes to know 
This life and that to which we go." 

Our sorrows bring us into the fellowship of all the noble 
spirits of all the ages, and, especially, do they drive us to 
the side of the "Man of Sorrows." It is written of Him 
that "He is the despised and rejected of men; a Man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were, 
our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed 
Him not. Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our 
sorrows; yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of 
God, and afflicted." "But He was wounded for our 
transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the 

203 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His 
stripes we are healed." 

There is vicariousness in all suffering; we cannot suffer 
in vain; it is by suffering that "the peaceable fruits of 
righteousness," and a well-poised character are, at last, 
produced to bless others as well as ourselves. The law 
of vicariousness runs through all nature, and through all 
life, as we now know it. The mineral gives itself for the 
vegetable which lifts it into the realm of life ; the vegetable 
is, in turn, sacrificed for the animal above it; and the highest 
of all the animals, but still an animal, man, who stands 
above all, and rules all, — O, what reeking altars, what 
slaughter pens, what rivers of pure blood are shed for him 
daily! What bleating sheep and innocent lambs, what 
lowing herds lay down their lives for him as an animal 
merely! But, for man's redemption, and to make Heaven 
a possibility, the Lamb of God is slain "from the founda- 
tion of the world." Humiliation, disgrace, infamy, death, 
in its most painful and infamous form, Gethsemane and 
Calvary are all endured by Him whose love and purity, 
whose deeds and character enchain the thought and en- 
list the affections of the world. He, too, was made "per- 
fect through suffering." That is, He was thus made per- 
fect as a Saviour, **the perfect Captain of our salvation." 
In character and deeds He was always perfect. 

Suffering often makes us conscious of qualities that we 
did not dream we possessed. God could show us'our real 
natures no other way. The hammer of adversity is in 
God's hands; He never strikes a blow amiss, nor one too 
many. "All things work together for good to them that 
love God; to them who are the called according to His 
purpose." ALL THINGS! At college, with our geo- 
logical hammers, we sought the quartz crystals; we struck 
vigorous blows to break away the encasing formation, but 
proceeded more carefully when a spike of a crystal 

204 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

presented itself; we cared nothing for the encasing stone, 
but we did care much for the beautiful and precious crys- 
tal whose liberation from its encasing mould was our pur- 
pose. God cares little for the environment which we prize 
too highly; often He crushes it that He may bring into the 
sunlight the transparent, the sanctified character to shine 
and reflect His image. 

"In the still air the music lies unheard; 

In the rough marble beauty hides unseen : 
To make the music and the beauty, needs 

The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen. 

Great Master, touch us with Thy skilful hand. 

Let not the music that is in us die; 
Great Sculptor, hew and polish us; nor let 

Hidden and lost. Thy form within us lie. 

Spare not the stroke! Do with us as Thou wilt. 
Let there be naught unfinished, broken, marred. 

Complete Thy purpose that we may become 
Thy perfect image. Thou our God and Lord." 

"What shall we say then to these things? If God be 
for us, who can be against us?" 

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall 
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or naked- 
ness, or peril, or sword ? 

"Nay, m all these things we are more than conquerors 
through Him that loved us." 

"For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor 
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, 
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other 
creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God 
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

205 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

To wait patiently for the Lord, never to let a murmur 
escape our lips, but to rejoice even in our afflictions, in our 
severest trials, to put our defense into His hands, and not 
to strike back when smitten, — that it is to be Pauline and 
Christlike; that it is to live the life of faith and hope, and 
to set the world the example it most needs. 

"If in thy path some thorns are found, 
O, think who bore them on His brow; 

If grief thy sorrowing heart has found, 
It reached a holier than thiu. 

Toil on, nor deem, though sore it be. 

One sigh unheard, one prayer forgot; 
The day of rest will dawn for thee; 

Wait, meekly wait, and murmur not." 

Sunshine and clouds, lights and shadows are often blended 
in this world; suffering and joy are near relatives; peace 
and discord follow each other; earth is the vestibule of 
Heaven; it is a mistake to suppose that sorrows are not 
compatible with the deepest serenity, or that a life of toil 
and pain may not, at last, be crowned with eternal joys. 
Wm. CuUen Bryant puts it beautifully in one of his familiar 
and immortal lyrics: — 

"Deem not that they are blest alone 

Whose days a peaceful tenor keep; 
The anointed Son of God makes known 

A blessing for the eyes that weep. 

The light of smiles shall fill again 

The lids that overflow with tears; 
And weary hours of woe and pain 

Are promises of happier years. 

206 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

There is a day of sunny rest 
For every dark and troubled night; 

And Grief may bide an evening guest, 
But Joy will come with morning light. 

Nor let the good man's trust depart, 
Though life its common gifts deny, 

Though with a pierced and broken heart, 
And spurned of men he goes to die. 

For God hath marked each sorrowing day, 

And numbered every secret tear; 
And Heaven's long age of bliss shall pay 

For all His children suffer here." 

One day, when Michael Angelo, who was not only a 
painter, sculptor, and an architect, but also a poet, was 
engaged upon a block of marble, a holy thought sought ex- 
pression ; he laid aside his tools, took up his pen, and wrote 
this couplet: — 

''The more the marble wastes. 
The more the statue grows." 



207 



Borderland. 



"Here dwells the saint in pure delight, 

Here dreams he visions sweet; 
Here walks he in the summer light, 

Where happy angels meet: — 
In Borderland. 

Where does the rapturous music ring 

Adown the heights undreamt? 
There radiant Hope is on the wing: 

Two worlds are in it blent, — 
In Borderland. 

His eyes unfilmed, can now behold 

The glories none can tell; 
He fain would walk the streets of gold, 

He yields him to the spell 
Of Borderland. 

O, happy land, with Heaven so near, 

Just waiting for the Day; 
The pilgrim saint, without a fear, 

Delights to praise and pray 
In Borderland. 

Welcome sweet, eternal life, 
Ended now is all my strife; 
I mount, I live, I rise, I fly, 
Angels fill the sunny sky; 
Clouds dissolve to faces bright, 
Raptures burst upon my sight, — 
Flowers and friends and perfumes rare, 
Music thrills, — fills all the air." 



CHAPTER XIX. 



BORDERLAND. 



I KNOW a company of nearly one hundred men and 
women, of which company the youngest is sixty-five, and 
the oldest ninety-five years of age. They call themselves 
the "Sunrise Society." They are living in "Borderland," 
or in "Beulah Land." Why do they call themselves the 
"Simrise," rather than the "Sunset Society?" Because 
darkness follows the sunset, while glorious day follows the 
sunrise, and with them it is nearing the dawn of an Eter- 
nal Day. They sing: — 

"The morning sun is rising fast, 

My race is nearly run; 
My strongest trials now are past, 

My triumph is begun. 

O, come, angel band, 

Come, and around me stand: 

O, bear me away on your snowy wings 

To my eternal Home." 

The rising sun never bursts full-orbed and instantan- 
eously above the horizon. First the herald streaks announce 
the coming of the god of day; perchance, brilliantly il- 
lumined clouds lie in strata of gold and fire, in purple and 
silver along the horizon; then, later, myriads of fiery spear- 
points and darting lines shoot through every cloud, and the 
breath of Morning lifts them and drives them rapidly away, 



211 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

no man knoweth whither; the sparkUng dews, the odorous 
flowers, the singing birds, the stir of life, the hum of industry, 
the shortening shadows, the rising sun, higher and higher 
until Noon is king, and Day has forgotten Night. Life, 
all life is great, and "to be living, is sublime." 

The aged pilgrim, with dulled hearing and failing sight, 
slowly moving on through Borderland, is just in the morning 
twilight of a blissful, coming Day, whose sun shall never 
set, that eternal life which is the supreme gift of God. 
Life, boundless, blissful life, sparkling in youth, burning 
still in the bones of age, flowing in the strong currents of 
desire, lifting high its crowned head in holy ambitions and 
pure aspirations. Life, with its loves and fears, its foaming 
happiness and its deep undercurrents of joy and peace. 
Life, in Borderland, with its outlook, its battle-cry, its com- 
ing, dawning glories, its final victory! 

It is a physical fact that if we could .get beyond the at- 
traction of gravitation, we would then fall or fly from this 
to some other planet, or to that radiant star which we call 
our sun. The saints of God, young and old, who live in 
Borderland, are in the attraction of Heaven; they feel that 
attraction and yield themselves to it much more than to the 
attractions of this earth, their temporary residence; they 
are pilgrims and strangers here, and claim their real cit- 
izenship in ''The City That Lieth Four-Square." Their 
thoughts are above; their motives of life are not the nearer 
things, but they have their origin hard by the throne of 
God; their ambitions are not circumscribed by the narrow 
limits of this life. It is not simply a beautiful poem, but 
a blessed experience they sing with Wesley: — 

"On Jordan's stormy banks I stand, 

And cast a wishful eye 
To Canaan's fair and happy land, 

Where my possessions lie. 

212 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

O, the transporting, rapturous scene 

That rises to my sight! 
Sweet fields arrayed in living green, 

And rivers of delight. 

There generous fruits that never fail, 

On trees immortal grov^r; 
There rock and hill and brook and vale 

With milk and honey flow. 

O'er all those wide, extended plains 

Shines one eternal day; 
There God, the Son, forever reigns 

And scatters night away. 

No chilling winds, nor poisonous breath 

Can reach that healthful shore; 
Sickness and sorrow, pain and death 

Are felt and feared no more. 

When shall I reach that happy place. 

And be forever blest? 
When shall I see my Father's face, 

And in His bosom rest? 

Filled with delight, my raptured soul 

Would here no longer stay; 
Though Jordan's waves around me roll. 

Fearless I'd launch away." 

Borderland is a land of mystery on both sides; both on 
this and its further side; it is both cis- Alpine and trans- 
Alpine; it is the meeting-place of two worlds; the trysting 
place of Time and Eternity. The poets have put a stream 
between the two, but, many who have gone down into the 

213 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

mystic realm, have found neither valley nor stream, but 
only a sweet surprise, a company of angels, familiar friends, 
and the pain and anguish of death have been merged and 
forgotten in the bliss of life. This v^^orld, with its marvel- 
lous insistence, pushes itself into the future world whose 
secrets and mysteries are so carefully guarded and withheld 
from our gaze; yet, too, the mystic gates on the other edge 
of Borderland are often left ajar, and ravishing glimpses 
have been accorded to those who have entered through the 
gates we call ''Death," but whose real name is ''Life." 
On this side they are lettered: "The Gates of Death." 
But the same portals, on the other side, are marked, "The 
Gates of Life." How many have stood on Pisgah heights, 
and have caught more than mere glimpses of the Promised 
Land; and, like John of Patmos, were not permitted, then, 
to enter, but have come back to tell us what they saw. 

"For weary feet 

Awaits a street 

Of wondrous pave and golden; 

For hearts that ache 

The angels wake 

The story sweet and olden." 

It is in this Borderland where so many sweet things are 
found of thought, of experience and expression; of hope 
and faith and ecstatic vision; enough to fill many volumes 
of song and sight, of visions and dreams, of Pisgah views, 
of death-bed raptures, and mountain-top realities. It is 
here that Phebe Gary sang: — 

"One sweetly solemn thought 

Comes to me o'er and o'er, 
I'm nearer my Home to-day 

Than I've ever been before. 



214 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Nearer the bound of life 

Where we lay our burdens down; 

Nearer leaving the cross, 
Nearer gaining the crown. 

But, lying darkly between, 
Winding down through the night. 

Is the deep and unknown stream 
That leads at last to the light." 

The fear, the timidity which we so often feel, and that 
makes us tremble as we approach the pain and the mys- 
teries of the last hour, are often entirely dispelled when, 
at last, we reach the gateway. We do not need dying grace 
until we come to the hour, and then God will be with us 
as so many millions have found. But it is only natural 
and human to pray as Whittier did: — 

"When on my day of life the night is falling. 
And in the wind, from unsunned spaces blown, 

I hear far voices out of darkness calling 
My feet to paths unknown. 

Thou, who hast made my home-life so pleasant. 
Leave not its tenant when its walls decay; 

O, Love divine, O Helper, ever-present. 
Be thou my strength and stay. 

I have but Thee, my Father ; let Thy Spirit 
Be with me then to comfort and uphold." 

It is as we approach Borderland, rather than in that 
land, where our hope and faith are tested. 

Paul Boyton, fifty miles from the Irish coast, in the At- 
lantic ocean, on a dark and stormy night, slips down over 

215 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

the side of the vessel into the cold, tumultuous waves of a 
merciless sea; he depends upon the rubber suit he wears 
to bear his head above the waves until he can propel himself 
to the far-distant shore. I have a similar plunge to make; 
I must make it alone, and with the film of death gathering 
over my eyes, with sounds of earth growing dull and dis- 
tant. Will the anchor hold ? Will faith be steady and un- 
wavering in its last test? What is the testimony of those 
who have made the plunge ? 

Frances Ridley Havergal, dying in extreme physical 
pain, said to her friends: "I have a good, big foundation 
to stand on! It is my Lord Jesus Christ." 

Michael Angelo, in extreme old age, wrote these lines: — 

"Well nigh the voyage is now overpast. 
And my frail bark, through troubled seas and rude. 
Draws near the common haven where, at last, 
Must due account be rendered; well I know 
How vain will then appear the favored art, 
Sole idol long and monarch of my heart; 
; For all is vain that man desires below. 

And now remorseful thoughts my soul alarm, — 
That which must come, and that beyond the grave; 
Picture and sculpture lose their feeble charm, 
And to that Help Divine I turn for aid 
Who from the cross extends His ar-m to save." 

Alfred Cookman sang no song of doubt as he ''swept 
through the gates, washed in the blood of the Lamb." 
Doubt never sings. 

"Enoch walked with God, and he was not for God took 
him." 

Elijah, somewhere in mid-air, passed through the change 
which all must have, and, with angel escorts, he, too, swept 
through the gates of pearl, in his chariot of fire. 

216 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Bishop Haven, in Borderland, and expecting to find the 
''river" of which he had sung, and whose cold waters he 
feared, said with his latest breath: ''I find no river here." 

President McKinley, calm and self-possessed, unshaken 
by any physical agonies, clear in his mind and firm in his 
faith, whispered with quivering lips: — 

"Nearer, my God to Thee. 
Nearer to Thee!" 

"It is God's way! Good-bye all!" 

The last words that ever fell from the mortal lips of the 
author of "Ben Hur", were the sublime words: "Thy will 
be done." 

The late Archbishop of Canterbury, as he met the death- 
angel, quietly said: "It is, really, nothing much, after all." 

Another bishop exclaimed: "O, the pain and bHss of 
dying." 

Pliny, from much clinical observation, declared it as his 
opinion, that the moment of death was the most exquisite 
instant of life. 

Dr. Solander was so delighted with the sensation of 
dying by cold in the snow, that he always afterward re- 
sented his rescue. 

Dr. Hunter, in his latest moments, grieved that he "could 
not write how easy and delightful it is to die." 

The work of the ministry is peculiarly adapted to the 
collection of reliable testimony to verify John Wesley's 
statement that "our people die well." All God's people 
so die, though no two deaths are the same. 

A splendid youth, whose brother had died only a few 
weeks before, said to his mother, who, with heavy eyes, 
but with unconquerable devotion, was sitting at his bedside: 
"Mother, I hear Willie calling me." Long had they been 
playmates. 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

"No, no, my child," said the mother, 'Hhere is no sound 
in this room." 

"But, mother, Hsten, I do hear music." 

"There is no music here, my child." 

"Yes, mother, I must go; Willie is calling." And his 
spirit left his body so gently, so silently that the mother 
could not mark the exact instant, but she, too, caught a 
glimpse of Heaven through whose open portals two of her 
dear boys had passed. 

Many, many years afterwards, that same mother, then 
eighty-three years of age, approached the time of her own 
glorification. She repeated over and over again the twenty- 
third psalm, and other scriptures which had been her fav- 
orite daily manna; she prayed with and for her minister 
who visited her in her sickness; for the text upon which 
she asked her minister to make a few remarks, she se- 
lected : "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow 
of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod 
and thy staff they comfort me." Her mind was intensely 
alert to all that was going on around her, but no less alert 
to "Heaven rising on her view." 

I knew a woman so unspeakably happy in the midst of 
most dreadful pain, that she wanted to shout the high 
praises of God, but she told me she was unable to do so, 
because she would thus increase her physical agonies. 
But her face was as radiant as that of an angel, and that 
radiancy was marked upon her face for days after the happy 
spirit had left her body. 

Another such a face now comes before me out of the shad- 
ows of memory; it is that of an Irish lady who had been a 
sufferer for a long time; when the last moment came, she 
opened wide her eyes, a smile played upon her lips, and she 
simply said the word, "Father!" And with that vision 
and smile and heavenly beauty carved by the sculptor angel, 
Death, she swiftly fled into her Father's arms. 

oi8 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Dying? What is dying? Luther F. Beecher answers 
that question as follows: 

"What is dying? I am standing upon the seashore. 
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning 
breeze, and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of 
beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until she 
hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and 
sky come down to meet and mingle with each other; then 
someone at my side says: 'There! She's gone!' Gone 
where? Gone from my sight — that is all. She is just as 
large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left 
my side, and just as able to bear her load of living freight 
to the place of her destination. Her diminished size is 
in me and not in her. 

And just at that moment when someone at my side said : 
' There ! She is gone !' there are other eyes that are watch- 
ing for her coming, and other voices ready to take up the 
glad shout: 'There she comes!' And this is dying." 

But what of the further side of Borderland. Still less 
is known of that side than of this. What will be our first 
impressions after the spirit has left the body? Where 
shall we find ourselves then? Whom shall we first see? 
What will be our physical environment ? What will be our 
thoughts and emotions ? What did the Saviour mean when 
He said: "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise?" 
What is meant by a "third Heaven"? Is there then, a 
first and a second Heaven, lower states than the third? 
And is the third reserved for a still more remote reward 
and inheritance? What is the real Hades? Is there 
more than one Capital City? Are there gradations of joy, 
of honor, of nearness to God ? Do these gradations cor- 
respond to different localities, one of which, perhaps the 
lowest, being called Paradise? Are there more stars in 
some cro^\Tis than in others? Are there starless crowns 
that still are cro'v\Tis? How the questions multiply, 

210 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

naturally leading us through Borderland into Heaven itself, 
whose ultimate mysteries no one can penetrate. Each 
must answer these, and many similar questions, for himself, 
and as he pleases and best can under the lights of revela- 
tion, reason and faith. 

May it not be that when our eyes first open in the spir- 
itual realm, on that line which divides Borderland from 
Paradise, we shall first see the familiar faces of some who 
have come down to that line to welcome us, and to escort 
us to the "mansions prepared"? Perchance, a mother, 
a father, a child, a brother or sister, or a dear friend ? Or, 
it may be a happy throng of the "blood- washed," and they 
attended by angels who have been our "ministering spirits." 
Whoever it may be, our hearts will thrill, and there will be 
a sweet home feeling, a feeling of joy, of peace and victory, 
while a thousand eager questions will leap to our lips, just 
as our escorts too, will be eager to tell us a thousand things 
they have learned from their residence there. 

Thus, I believe that among our earliest sensations and 
experiences will be a most delightful self-consciousness that 
we are really and certainly in Heaven; then, the recog- 
nition of voices, of faces, of families, the "long lost and 
wept," and a feeling of rest and Home, of perfect satis- 
faction such as we never had before, and already the kind- 
ling ardor of gratitude and praise, and a strong desire to 
see Him who has been the Giver of it all. 

We may not be able at once, perhaps not for centuries, 
to endure the insufferable glories of God's immediate pres- 
ence, any more than we could now endure the closest prox- 
imity to the sun. We shall certainly feel his radiance, 
and bask our souls in it, and we shall know Him as never 
before, but under what limitations, conditions and immediate 
environments, we cannot tell. As here, we pass from in- 
fancy to youth, from youth to middle life, and on to matur- 
ity, so, it may be, it will be yonder, and our surroundings, 

i^?9 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

our proximity to God may have something to do with our 
spiritual state and the number of years we have spent in 
Yonderland. 

One thing is certain, that always and forever there will 
be more to follow, to attain ; something still to learn ; heights 
always unattained; achievements yet unmade, but lingering 
in our minds and hearts, and beckoning us on and up; 
more to love with a deeper and sweeter affection, and more 
to do for Him whom then we will only begin to love as He 
has always deserved. 



22?-I 



How IS Heaven Attained? 



Beneath Thy hammer, Lord, I he 

With contrite spirit prone: 
O, mould me till to self I die, 

And Hve to Thee alone. 

With frequent disappointments sore, 

And many a bitter pain, 
Thou laborest at my being's core 

Till I be formed again. 

Smite, Lord! Thy hammer's needful wound 

My baffled hopes confess. 
Thine anvil is the sense profound 

Of mine own nothingness. 

Smite! till from all my idols free, 

And filled with love divine, 
My heart shall know no good but The ■, 

And have no will but Thine. 

—F. H. Hedge. 



CHAPTER XX. 

HOW IS HEAVEN ATTAINED? 

There is a prevalent universalism which draws no lines, 
and makes no exclusions; it is impossible to reconcile it 
with the bible; we must give up the one or the other. There 
is also a bald, often a brazen rationalism, and scientific 
(?) philosophical materialism which brushes aside the in- 
spiration of the Book, the divinity of our Lord, the sub- 
jective experience of millions of saints, b^«-ushes it all aside 
by a single audacious sweep of the New Philosophy, aided 
by materialistic evolution, and substitutes nothing but 
vague theories which rest upon nothing and lead nowhere. 

The classification of the Scriptures, as to human char- 
acter, is very simple; it is a "right" and "left," a "sheep" 
and "goat", a "bitter" and "sweet", a "light" and "dark" 
classification, and that is all, — two classes described by 
their synonyms and anti-nyms. It has been contended, 
however, that there should be a third class; that this two- 
fold classification is unscientific, narrow and unphilosoph- 
ical; that there are millions who, if they are not "sheep," 
are just as certainly not "goats", and, hence, they have 
invented a middle term. There is an animal in the moun- 
tains of South America which is neither sheep nor goat, 
but partakes of the nature of both, and is known as the 
alpaca. Is there such a type of men? Is Purgatory a 
logical necessity from which all such will finally emerge 
with all the "goat" eliminated from their nature, and stand 
as "sheep" at last in the Master's fold? 

The Book knows nothing save a two-fold classification: 

"He that is not for me is against me, and he that gather- 
eth not with me, scattereth abroad." 

"And He saith unto him : * Friend, how camest thou hither 

225 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

not having a wedding garment?' And he was speech-, 
less." 

"And He shall set the sheep on the right hand, but the 
goats on the left." 

"Then shall He also say unto them on the left hand, 
'Depart from me, ye cursed.' " 

"And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that 
defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh 
a lie; but they which are written in the Lamb's Book of 
Life." 

"He that is unjust, let -him be unjust still, and he that 
is filthy let him be filthy still." 

These, and many similar scriptures, and, in fact, the 
whole tone and trend, — the entire system of divine truth 
is founded upon this simple, two-fold classification of "be- 
lievers" and "unbelievers", those who accept the Gospel, 
and those who reject it. 

This, then, brings us logically, to our first conclusion 
as to the attainment of Heaven; primarily and fundament- 
ally, it must include the acceptance of Jesus Christ and His 
salvation, which always eventuates in such transformation 
of character as to make fitness for Heaven; it involves the 
preparation which is necessary for Heaven both as a state 
and a place. 

Heaven is irrevocably, scripturally, and philosophically 
bound up with Jesus Christ as God, and as the divine 
Author of the atonement, and as the moral Governor of 
this world. The death-blow of Unitarianism is found in 
the single statement that "I am the Way, the Truth, and 
the Life." "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." 

We see already that Heaven is not for all; that certain 
classes, according to their faith and characters, are ex- 
cluded. How searching is the following from Hebrews: — 

"But ye are come to Mt. Sion, and unto the City of the 
living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable 

226 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

company of angels, to the general assembly and church 
of the first born which are written in Heaven; and to God, 
the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, 
and to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant, and 
to the blood of sprinkling which speaketh better things 
than the blood of Abel." 

"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit 
the kingdom of God ? Be not deceived, neither fornicators 
nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers 
of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor • covetous, 
nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit 
the kingdom of God." 

Here is divine classification; here is exclusion, or separa- 
tion based upon moral character; according to this pas- 
sage, there are, at least, eleven kinds of people who cannot 
enter Heaven. 

Heaven must be first a subjective attainment, as we have 
explained in the chapter on ''Heaven as a State and a Place." 
It is first a moral achievement, a spiritual accomplishment 
through the help of God, and the grace of Jesus Christ; 
otherwise there would be no fitness, no correspondence 
with environment, and, consequently, there could be no 
joy, but only friction, misery, death. 

There must always be the spirit of the inspired poet 
who sang: 

"Whom have I in Heaven but Thee?" 

"There is none that I desire on earth but Thee." 

"Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward 
receive me into glory." How beautifully the two sides of 
Heaven are here set forth. First, to walk in all the "coun- 
sel of God," then the "glory." 

One can never drift heavenward; both the state and the 
place are attainments, the result of God-inspired efforts 
and voluntary election covering the entire period of one's 
life. There is not a step of the whole way, from beginning 

227 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

to end, where one may not fail; not a league of the whole 
voyage where shipwreck may not be made; and it is well for 
us to know that temptations are more numerous in middle 
life and beyond than in any other period of the battle. 
Heavefi is only for those who are faithful unto and to 
death. 

The several steps of the subjective attainment are con- 
tained in the following simple category: Believe — Halt — 
Turn — Lcok — Onward, with Christ in the heart, the Book 
as your spiritual guide, sin under your feet, while Faith and 
Hope look steadily to God and Heaven, and Love is the 
new power that now controls all the life. 

"Who seeks for Heaven alone to save his soul, 
May keep the path, but will not reach the goal; 
While he who walks in love may wander far, 
But God will bring him where the blessed are." 

Nothing is sweeter, and nothing pays better even here, 
than to live and work for Heaven. The Father smiles 
upon all such as attune their lives to Heaven's spiritual 
harmonies, and His smile and approval are to His children 
what sunshine is to a plant, or what the sound of the trumpet 
is in the ear of a warrior. We, as God's saints are the busy 
bees gathering "loot" for Heaven. Dost thou remember 
Shakespeare's lines: — 

"Make loot of Summer's velvet buds, 

Which pillage they, with merry march bring home 

To the tent royal of their emperor; 

He, busied in his majesty, surveys 

The singing masons building roofs of gold ?" 

Thus we live imder "roofs of gold" and in the midst of 
all that is sweet, and pure, and wholesome and good, and 

228 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

He, our Emperor surveys with pleasure the honied treasure 
that we store above. 

Another invariable characteristic of those who are al- 
ready in the possession of Heaven, is their interest in others; 
they are not selfish in the possession of "the pearl of great 
price". It has been given to them as a gift; they know 
themselves to be unworthy of it, and, hence, their constant 
effort is to bestow it upon others. 

The reader will remember the fitting verses with which 
WTiittier closes his little poem, ''The Two Rabbis." 

"Long after, when his head-stone gathered moss, 
Traced on the Targum marge of Onkelos, 
In Ben Nathan's hand, these words were read: 
Hope not the cure of sin till self be dead ; 
Forget it in Love's service, and the debt 
Thou canst not pay, the angels will forget; 
Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone. 
Save thou a soul, and it shall save thine own." 

With such a spirit, with such longing and effort, forever 
doing our best for Him, and as in His sight, our heavenward 
journey is as natural as is the return home after the day's 
work is done. We know that there is shelter and refresh- 
ment and warm welcome awaiting us; there is delightful 
correspondence; we fit into Heaven as Heaven fits into all 
our life, plans, motives, aspirations, and holy endeavors 
Neither can sorrow or bereavement hinder or stay, or em- 
bitter us, but 

"Out of my stony griefs 

Bethel I'll raise, 
So, by my woes, to be 

Nearer, my God to Thee, 
Nearer to Thee." 



229 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

My tempted reader, what difference does it make whether 
we reach our destination in the one way or the other? It 
does, of course make some difference, for no one would 
choose the way of sorrow and long-continued trial; but, 
after all, there are sweet compensations, and the matter 
of the utmost importance is to reach the City at last, and 
to be ''forever with the Lord." 

"The Father's home has many rooms. 

And each is fair; 
And some are reached through gathered glooms 

By silent stair: 
But He keeps house and makes it Home 
Whichever way the children come. 

Plenty and peace are everywhere 

His house within; 
The rooms are eloquent with prayer, 

The songs begin. 
And dear hearts filled with love are glad, 
Forgetting that they once were sad. 

The Father's house is surely thine, 

Therefore, why wait? 
His lights of love through darkness shine, 

The hour grows late; 
Push back the curtains of thy doubt. 
And enter, — none will cast thee out." 

The school of Experience is often, usually a place of 
bitter things. Let us be patient; it is a part of our necessary 
training and discipline. Holland's lines are true: — 

"Heaven is not reached by a single bound. 
But we build the ladder on which we rise 
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 

And we mount to its summit round by round." 

230 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

Often failures, backslidings, tears, wrong motives, sins 
of omission and commission, but ever the unquenchable 
flame of holy desire, the longing for holiness; still the word 
of prayer, and devotion to the church, the maintenance 
of the forms of religion, still some Christian service rendered, 
— all under the kind Providence of God, keep our heads 
above the waves, and make us fit at last for our heavenly 
inheritance. 

"Don't say that fate's against you, 

My brother, if once you fail. 
Be up and doing, thus only 

Will your prayer and hope prevail. 

Perhaps, you're tired and tempted 

By the evils which are rife; 
But if in the fray you conquer, 

You're manlier for the strife. 

Only the souls who bravely 

Meet the opposing foe 
Of an adverse fate can ever 

The bliss of victory know. 

Then go, in the strength of manhood, 

Go, in the name of God, 
Of Him who in Gethsemane 

The path of anguish trod. 

Stand by your weaker brother, 

Stand for your own soul's sake; 
Open a way for freedom. 

And sin's dark barrier break. 

231 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

* Quit you like men !' Be steadfast! 

For in your hands ye hold 
All which belongs to the future, 

All of its hopes untold." 



232 



Heaven in Poetic Literature. , 



In Alpine valleys, they who watch for dawn, 
Look never to the east, but fix their eyes 
On loftier mountain peaks of snow, which rise 

To west or south. Before the happy morn 

Has sent one ray of kindling red, to warn 
The sleeping clouds along the eastern skies 
That it is near, — flushing, in glad surprise, 

These royal hills, for royal watchmen born, 
Discover that God's great new day begins, 

And, shedding from their sacred brows a light 

Prophetic, wake the valley from its night. 
Such mystic hght as this a great soul wins, 
Who overlooks earth's wall of grief and sins. 

And, steadfast, always, gazing on the white 

Great throne of God, can call aloud with deep. 
Pure voice of truth, to waken them who sleep. 

— Helen Hunt Jackson. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

HEAVEN IN POETIC LITERATURE. 

LAUS MORTIS. 

Nay, why should I fear Death, 
Who gives us life, and, in exchange, takes breath ? 

He is like cordial Spring 
That lifts above the soil each buried thing. 

Like Autumn, kind and brief — 
The frost that chills the branches, frees the leaf. 

Like Winter's stormy hours, 
That spread their fleece of snow to save the flowers. 

The lordliest of all things: 
Life lends us only feet. Death gives us wings. 

Fearing no covert thrust, 
Let me walk onward, armed in valiant trust, — 

Dreading no unseen knife. 
Across Death's threshold step from life to life. 

O, all ye frightened folk. 
Whether ye wear a crown, or bear a yoke, 

Laid in one equal bed, 
When once your coverlet of grass is spread, 



235 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE 

What daybreak need ye fear? 
The Love will rule you there that guides you here. 

Where Life, the sower, stands, 
Scattering the ages from his swinging hands, 

Thou waitest. Reaper lone, 
Until the multitudinous grain hath grown. 

Scythe-bearer, when thy blade 
Harvests my flesh, let me be unafraid. 

God's husbandman thou art, 
In His unwithering sheaves to bind my heart. 

— Frederic Lawrence Knowles. 



236 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



RE-UNION. 



I think, sometimes, when sitting all alone, 

What would it be to see the faces blest 

Of those who long since entered into rest, 

Whose brows with light celestial long since have shone ? 

What would it be to hear again the tone 

Of voices that erst thrilled me through with love, 

Whose music long since joined the choir above, 

And left me silent in a wordless moan ? 

What would it be to hear the light steps steal 

Over the threshold of my solitude? 

O, vain, fond fancies of a yearning heart, 

Be patient, and thou yet shalt feel 

That chief among the joys of life renewed 

Are the re-unions that can never part. 

— Caroline May. 



237 



THE^CITY THAT LlETH FOUR-SQUARE. 
DEATH. 



What if some morning when the stars are paling, 
And the dawn whitened, and the east was clear. 

Strange peace and rest fell on me from the presence 
Of a benignant spirit standing near? 

And I should tell him, as he stood beside me, 

This is our Earth, most friendly Earth, and fair: 

Daily its sea and shore through sun and shadow 
Faithful it turns, robed in its azure air. 

There is blest living here, loving and serving, 
And quest of truth, and serene friendships dear; 

But stay not. Spirit! Earth has one destroyer, — 
His name is Death; flee, lest he find thee here. 

And what if then, while the still morning brightened. 
And freshened in the elms the summer's breath, 

Should gravely smile on me the gentle angel. 
And take me by the hand, and say: "My name is Death." 

— Edward Rowland Sill. 



The path of sorrow, and that path alone, 
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown. 
No traveler ever reached this blest abode, 
Who found not thorns and briars on his road. 

— William Cowper. 



Genius spreads its wings, 
And soars beyond itself, or selfish things; 
Talent has need of stepping-stones; some cross. 
Some cheated purpose, some great pain or loss. 
Must lay the groundwork, and arouse ambition, 
Before it labors onward to fruition. 

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 



238 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



A SONG OF TRUST. 



Though all my way, dear Lord, may be 

A shadowy place. 
Content am I, if I may see 

At last. Thy face. 

What though the friends, the best beloved. 

Depart from me, 
And life's best joys be far removed — 

I'll still trust Thee. 

And following on, my prayer shall be 

That, afterwhile. 
Heaven's gates may open unto me, 

And show Thy smile. 

— Sarah Ellis Summerland. 



239 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 
DO THEY FORGET? 



Do they love us still, those spirits bright, 
Who far from our homes have sped? 

Do they love us still in those realms of light, 
Our blissful, beautiful dead? 

Do those dear ones safe in the heavenly land 

Ne'er think of the loved ones here. 
Who are missing the touch of a loving hand. 

The tone of a voice most dear? 

Do they talk as they climb the painless hills. 

In familiar converse sweet, 
Of those who are treading earth's pathways still, 

With weary and wayworn feet? 

Ah no! though their light in this world has paled. 

Dream not that their hearts forget. 
Can we doubt their love, when it never failed? 

Aye, we know that they love us yet. 

They call our names in the twilight gray. 

When the shadows of evening fall. 
Those sweet, low voices from far away. 

In heavenly cadence call. 

Full often they stand at the Beautiful Gate, 
When God's children are gathering home. 

And with eager, expectant faces wait 
To see if their own have come. 

O, those loving hearts in the realms above. 

That in life we can ne'er forget. 
We know they are watching with eyes of love. 
We know that they love us yet. 

— Charlotte D. Wilbur. 
240 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



BEYOND TO-DAY. 



If we could see beyond to-day 

As God can see; 
If all the clouds should roll away, 

The shadows flee — 
O'er present griefs we would not fret, 
Each sorrow we would soon forget. 
For many joys are waiting yet 

For you and me. 

If we could know beyond to-day, 

As God doth know. 
Why dearest treasures pass away, 

And tears must flow — 
And why the darkness leads to light. 
Why dreary paths will soon grow bright. 
Some day life's wrongs will be made right, 

Faith tells us so. 

If we could see, if we could know. 

We often say! 
But God in love a veil doth throw 

Across the way; 
We cannot see what lies before. 
And so we cling to Him the more, 
He leads us till this life is o'er. 

Trust and obey. 

— Christian Work. 



241 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



THE LAST VOYAGE. 



My work on earth is well-nigh done, 

I wait the setting of the sun. 

I hear the surging of the sea 

That beats upon Eternity. 

i see far off the shadowy realm, 

And thither turn the trembling helm. 

The winds that blow so cold and drear 

Grow softer as the end draws near. 

The distant gleams of silver light 

Relieve the darkness of the night. 

There stand upon the misty shore 

Faint forms of loved ones gone before. 

The voice that once said: "Peace, be still!" 

Now whispers softly, "Fear no ill." 

I sail alone, yet not alone. 

The Saviour takes me for His own. 

I wait His greeting when I land, 

I wait the grasp of His loved hand. 

— Thomas M. Clark. 
Aged ninety years. 



242 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 
SHUT IN. 



''Shut in," Ah, well, my body lies 

Confined and pent these walls between, 
The while my happy spirit flies 

As free as dancing wavelet's sheen. 
Three angels softly press the key 

That holds my soul in sombre thrall; 
Then lightly float and whisper me, 

God's mercy and His love for all. 

With one, the angel of the Past, 

I tread the paths of childhood's days; 
I laugh and shout and lightly cast 

All care aside for childhood's plays. 
I wander through fair orchard aisles, 

I pluck the fruitage red and gold. 
Heap hoards of nuts in fragrant piles. 

And golden hours rich blessings hold. 

The Present angel comes to me, 

A wondrous gift within her hands. 
Through books we sail on distant sea. 

And wander far in foreign lands; 
We mingle with the struggling throng 

That toil within the great world's shops, 
With jostling crowds are borne along 

To deepest mines, to mountain tops. 

And then the dearest of the three. 

Sits down at eve beside my bed. 
The angel of the blest To-be, 

When all of life and light are fled. 
A future bright she holds in view. 

Through lowly doorway hid by sod : 
O, soul, be patient, brave and true, 

What glories wait who walk with God. 

— Irene Pomeroy Shields, 
243 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



LOOK UPWARD. 



Fix thy thoughts on higher things! Lift thine eyes 
Above the dust that grimes thy tired feet, 
Above the mire and garbage of the street; 

Look upward, till thy glance shall sweep the skies. 

And on the wings of faith thy spirit rise. 

When thou hast made earth's pilgrimage complete. 
Thy task well done — eternal rest is sweet; 

Look up, toil on, for God's grace satisfies. 

Crave not the dross and vanities of earth — 
Escape its envies, strifes, pretense and dearth 
Of purity. Look up through faith and live 
To strive for nobler ends than earth can give; 
Look upward still above the cross to see 
Thy heritage of immortality. 

— Margaret Scott Hall- 



244 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 
''FATHER, TAKE MY HAND." 



The way is dark, my Father. Cloud on cloud 
Is gathering thickly o'er my head, and loud 
The thunders roar above me. See, I stand 
Like one bewildered. Father, take my hand. 

And through the gloom 

Lead safely Home 
Thy child. 

The day goes fast, my Father, and the night 
Is drawing darkly down. My faithless sight 
Sees ghostly visions. Fears, a spectral band. 
Encompass me. O, Father, take my hand, 

And from the night 

Lead up to light 
Thy child. 

The way is long, my Father, and my soul 
Longs for the rest and quiet of the goal ; 
While yet I journey through this weary land. 
Keep me from wandering. Father, take my hand: 

Quickly and straight 

Lead to Heaven's gate 
Thy child. 

The path is rough, my Father. Many a thorn 
Has pierced me; and my weary feet all torn 
And bleeding, mark the way. Yet thy command 
Bids me press forward. Father, take my hand* 

Then safe and blest 

Lead up to rest 
Thy child. 



245 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

The throng is great, my Father. Many a doubt 
And fear and danger compass me about; 
And foes oppress me sore. I cannot stand 
Or go alone. O Father, take my hand, 

And through the throng 

Lead safe along 
Thy child. 

The cross is heavy, Father. I have borne 
It long, and still do bear it. Let my worn 
And fainting spirit rise to that blest Land 
Where crowns are given. Father, take my hand; 
And reaching down. 
Lead to a crown 
Thy child. 

Henry N. Cobb. 



Who, who would live alway, away from his God, 
Away from yon Heaven, that blissful abode. 
Where rivers of pleasure flow o'er the bright plains. 
And the noontide of glory eternally reigns? 

There saints of all ages in harmony meet. 

Their Saviour and brethren transported to greet; 

While anthems of rapture unceasingly roll. 

And the smile of the Lord is the feast of the soul. 

— Wm. A. Muhlenberg. 



246 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 
THE LAND BEYOND THE SEA. 



The Land beyond the sea! 
When will life's task be o'er ? 
When shall we reach that soft, blue shore, 
O'er the dark strait whose billows foam and roar ? 

When shall we come to Thee, 

Calm Land, beyond the sea? 

The Land beyond the sea! 

How close it often seems, 

When flushed with evening's peaceful gleams; 

And the wistful heart looks o'er the strait, and dreams; 
It longs to fly to Thee, 
Calm Land, beyond the sea. 

The Land beyond the sea! 
Sometimes across the strait. 
Like a draw-bridge to a castle-gate. 
The slanting sunbeams lie, and seem to wait 

For us to pass to thee. 

Calm Land, beyond the sea. 

The Land beyond the sea! 
Sometimes distinct and near. 
It grows upon the eye and ear. 
And the gulf narrows to a threadlike mere: 

We seem halfway to see 

Calm Land beyond the sea. 

The Land beyond the sea! 
O, how the lapsing years 
'Mid our not unsubmissive tears. 
Have borne, now singly, now in fleets, the biers 

Of those we love to thee. 

Calm Land beyond the sea. 

247 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

The Land beyond the sea! 

How dark our present home! 

By the dull beach and sullen foam 

How wearily and drearily we roam, 
With outstretched arms to thee, 
Calm Land beyond the sea. 

The Land beyond the sea! 

When will our toil be done? 

Slow-footed years, more swiftly run, 

Into the gold of that unsetting sun! 
Homesick we are for thee. 
Calm Land beyond the sea. 

The Land beyond the sea! 

Why fadest thou in light? 

Why art thou better seen toward night? 

Dear Land, look always plain, look always bright, 
That we may gaze on thee. 
Calm Land beyond the sea. 

The Land beyond the sea! 

Sweet is thy endless rest, 

But sweeter far that Father's breast 

Upon thy shores eternally possest; 
For Jesus reigns o'er thee, 
Calm Land beyond the sea! 

— Frederick William Faher. 



248 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



''Not now, but in the coming years, 

It may be in the better land, 
We'll read the meaning of our tears, 

And there, sometime, we'll understand. 

We'll catch the broken thread again, 
And finish what we here began; 

Heaven will mysteries explain. 

And then, ah, then, we'll understand. 

We'll know why clouds instead of sun 
Were over many a cherished plan; 

Why song has ceased when scarce begun; 
'Tis there, sometime, we'll understand. 

Why what we longed for most of all. 
Eludes so oft, our eager hand; 

Why hopes are crushed, and castles fall. 
Up there, sometime, we'll understand. 

God knows the way, He holds the key. 
He guides us with unerring hand. 

Sometime, with tearless eyes, we'll see; 
Yes, there, up there, we'll understand." 



249 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



IN THE VALLEY. 



I tread in the vale of the shadow, but it hath no shade for 

me, 
Since One is by my side from whom the darkness far doth 

flee; 
Illumined is all the pathway by the brightness of His face, 
And at each new step I prove anew His covenant of grace. 

Across my way, full well I know, the river swift doth glide, 
But He will stay its hurrying course, or help me stem the 

tide; 
I care not which, I cannot fear with His strong arm around; 
The fastest flood is so more safe than else were solid ground. 

I can almost hear the rushing, and shall soon the waters 
see; 

But nearing them I near my Home, so the sight will wel- 
come be; 

And the passage will be quickly made unto the further 
shore. 

Where wait the dear ones who the wave have breasted 
just before. 

Yes, I am in the valley, and in front the river flows; 

But the Guardian of my earliest steps doth guard the jour- 
ney's close, 

And not a trace of trouble is in my trustful heart — 

Except that for the friends I grieve who grieve from me to 
part. 

250 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 

But their night of weeping soon will end, for the glad morn 
comes apace, 

When they and I and all God's own shall see Him face to 
face. 

And give each other greeting, no more farewells to say — 

Where the strand of life eternal shines in the light of death- 
less day. 

— Amy Parkinson. 



251 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE 



A SONG OF HEAVEN. 



I will sing you a song of the heavenly Land, 

The land of my visions and dreams: 
I long to be there in its radiance to stand, — 

More real than this earth-life it seems. 

Let me sing of a heart that is panting to-day 

For surcease from sorrow and pain, 
A heart that is loyal to God and His way. 

And is cleansed from iniquity's stain. 

I will sing of the friends that are waiting me there. 

Whose moments are filled with delight, 
They are happy with Jesus, and they breathe on the air. 

Or, their glory, they shout with their might. 

I sing of the angels that hover around, 

And, sometimes, the rustling of wings, 
Like velvety melody's tenderest sound, 

To my soul, in sweet music, it sings. 

I will sing of my Saviour, the only and best, 

My Friend and Redeemer is He; 
Even here on His bosom my soul iindeth rest, 

But what raptures when Him I shall see. 

— Alfred Kummer. 



253 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



WAITING. 



"I am waiting for the dawning 

Of that bright and blessed day, 
When the darksome night of sorrow 

Shall have vanished far away; 
When, forever with the Savior, 

Far beyond this vale of tears, 
I shall swell the song of worship 

Through the everlasting years. 

I am looking for the brightness, 

(See, it shineth from afar!) 
Of the clear and joyous beaming 

Of the 'Bright and Morning Star'; 
Through the dark gray mist of morning 

Do I see its glorious light; 
Then away with every shadow 

Of this sad, and weary night. 

I am waiting for the coming 

Of the Lord who died for me; 
O, His words have thrilled my spirit, 

*I will come again for thee!' 
I can almost hear His footfall 

On the threshold of the door, 
And my heart, my heart is longing 

To be His for evermore." 



253 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



WE REST IN THEE. 



Life's mystery — deep, restless as the ocean — 
Hath surged and wailed for ages to and fro; 

Earth's generations watch its ceaseless motion 
As in and out its hollow meanings flow; 

Shivering and yearning by that unknown sea, 
Let my soul calm itself, O Christ, in Thee! 

Between the mysteries of death and life 

Thou standest, loving, guiding, — not explaining; 

We ask, and Thou art silent — ^yet we gaze. 

And our charmed hearts forget their drear complaining 

No crushing fate — no stony destiny? 

Thou Lamb that hast been slain, we rest in Thee! 

— Harriet Beecher Stowe. 



254 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



THE SWEETEST THINGS. 



What are the sweetest things on earth? 
The souls transformed by heavenly birth; 
The cups of crystal waters given 
In name of Him, the King of Heaven, 

A radiant Hope, triumphant Faith, 
A Christian's victory over Death, 
The glance, the touch, the tones of Love, 
The sunshine streaming from above. 

What are the sweetest things below? 
The storms, or fiery furnace glow, 
Or other forms of chastening rod. 
So they reveal the form of God. 

What are the sweetest things of earth? 
They're moral goodness, manly worth, 
A woman's love, and childhood's glee, 
A sinner saved, a spirit free. 

A gift with its unselfish giver, 
A character like crystal river, 
A holy life, a snow-crowned head, 
A youth and maiden purely wed; 

A home of peace, of prayer and praise, 
The nights' repose and busy days, 
A battle won, unconscious worth, — 
These are the sweetest things of earth. 

— Alfred Kummer. 
255 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



FAR FRAE MY HAME. 



"I am far frae my hame, an' I'm weary aftenwhiles 

For the langed-for hame bringin', an' my Father's welcome 

smiles, 
And I'll ne'er be fu' content until my een do see 
The gowden gates of Heaven, an' my ain countree; 
The earth is flecked wi' flowers, mony tinted, fresh and gay,^ 
The birdies warble blithely, for my Father made them sae; 
But these sichts an' these soun's will as naething be to me 
When I hear the angels singing in my ain countree. 

I've His gude word of promise that some gladsome day the 

King 
To His ain royal Palace, His banished, Hame will bring, 
Wi' een an' wi' heart runnin' owre we shall see 
The King in His beauty, an' our ain countree. 
My sins hae been mony, and my sorrows hae been sair. 
But there they'll never vex me, nor be remembered mair, 
For His bluid hath made me white, an' His hand shall dry 

my ee, 
When He brings me Hame at last to my ain countree. 

He is faithful that hath promised, and He'll surely come 

again, 
He'll keep His tryst wi' me, at what hour I dinna ken ; 
But He bids me still to wait, an' ready aye to be 
To gang at ony moment to my ain coimtree. 
So I'm watching aye, an' singin' o' my hame as I wait. 
For the soun'ing o' His footfa' this side the gowden gate, 
God gie His grace to ilk ane wha' listens noo to me, — 
That we all may gang in gladness to our ain countree." 

256 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



THE GLORY SONG. 



"When all my labors and trials are o'er 
And I am safe on that beautiful shore, 
Just to be near the dear Lord I adore, 
Will through the ages be glory for me. 

Chorus. 

O, that will be glory for me, 

Glory for me, glory for me, 

When by His grace, I shall look on His face, 

That will be glory, be glory for me. 

When by the gift of His infinite love, 
I am accorded in Heaven a place, 
Just to be there, and to look on His face, 
Will through the ages be glory for me. 

Friends will be there I have loved long ago : 
Joy like a river around me will flow; 
Yet, just a smile from my Saviour, I know. 
Will through the ages be glory for me." 



257 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



HOME. 



There lies a little city in the hills; 

White are its roofs, dim is each dwelling's door, 

And peace with perfect rest its bosom fills. 

There the pure mist, the pity of the sea. 
Comes as a white, soft hand, and reaches o'er 
And touches its still face most tenderly. 

Unstirred and calm amid our shifting years, 
Lo! where it lies, far from the clash and roar. 
With quiet distance blurred, as if through tears. 

O heart, that prayest so for God to send 

Some living messenger to go before 

And lead the way to where thy longings end. 

Be sure, be very sure, that soon will come 
His kindest angel, and through that still door 
Into the infinite Love will lead thee Home. 

— Edward Rowland Sill. 



258 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



VICTORY. 



** Another of Adam's race, through Jesus' loving might, 

Hath crossed the waste, hath reached the goal, hath van- 
quished in the fight: — 

Hail! brother, hail! We welcome thee! Join in our sweet 
accord. 

Lift up the burden of our song: 'Salvation to our Lord!' 

And now from out the glory, the living cloud of light, 
The old familiar faces come beaming on his sight, 
The early-lost, the ever-loved, the friends of long ago. 
Companions of his conflicts and pilgrimage below. 

They parted here in weakness, in suffering and gloom, 
They meet amid the freshness of Heaven's immortal bloom. 
Henceforth in ever-during bliss to wander hand in hand, 
Beside the living waters, of the still and sinless land. 

O, who can tell the raptures of those to whom 'tis given 
Thus to renew the bonds of earth amid the bliss of Heaven ? 
Thrice blessed be His holy name, who for our fallen race 
Hath purchased, by His bitter pains, such plenitude of 
grace." 



''Some day we say, and turn our eyes 
Toward the fair hills of Paradise; 
Some time, some day, our eyes shall see 
The faces kept in memory. 
So we will wait, though years move slow: 
The happy time will come, we know." 



259 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



CHURCH TRIUMPHANT. 



"There remaineth therefore a rest for the people of God." 

There is a home for the child of God 

Whose sins have all been forgiven, 
And the weary believer forgets his load 

Of cares when he enters Heaven — 
O ye! whose hearts are with grief oppresl 
Rejoice, for this world is not your rest. 

There is a Friend in that world above, 

And His love is deep and pure; 
That Friend is Christ, and His arm is strong. 

And His mercy is ever sure. 
Hear this, O ye who love His name! 
He knows the weakness of your frame. 

And there is a heart in that world above. 
With a love that is better than wine, 

For O, how tender and large that heart. 
And how filled with Love divine! 

O ye, whose comforts below are few. 

That heart is Christ's, and He cares for you! 

And there are joys in that world above. 

The highest and purest and best. 
How sweet the news to a weary soul. 

Of a near, eternal rest! 
Rejoice and be glad, for you it is given 
To suffer and trust, but your rest is in Heaven. 

— Dr. John Hall. 
260 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



I CAN WAIT. 



I know that Heaven lies just beyond 

This earthly state; 
That Christ Himself holds Death's cold wand 

So I can wait. 

I know the dark mysterious ways 

My feet may tread 
Will all be plain when heavenly rays 
Are on them shed. 

I know the heart-aches of this life 

Will all be healed 
When the blessed peace that ends earth's strife 

Shall be revealed. 

I know that mid the world's turmoil 

God giveth rest; 
His arm is round me in its toil, 

And I am blest. 

I know that when my time shall come 

To dwell above, 
Jesus His child will welcome Home, 

With tenderest love. 

His angel guards will open wide 

Heaven's pearly gate, 
And I shall then be satisfied, — 

So I can wait." 



261 



THE CITY THAT LIETH FOUR-SQUARE. 



EARTH RECEDES. 



Earth with its dark and dreadful ills, 

Recedes and fades away; 
Lift up your heads, ye heavenly hills. 

The gates of Death give way. 

My soul is full of whispered song, 

My blindness is my sight; 
The shadows that I feared so long, 

Are all alive with light. 

The while my pulses faintly beat. 

My faith doth so abound, 
I feel grow firm beneath my feet 

The green immortal ground. 

That faith to me a courage gives 

Low as the grave to go; 
I know that my Redeemer lives; 

That I shall live I know. 

The palace walls I almost see, 
Where dwells my Lord and King; 

O, Grave where is thy victory? 
O, Death, where is thy sting? 

— Alice Carey. 



262 



KAY 22 \^^ 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: August 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



{>i 



